Its business partners will be given assistance with SME-focused marketing campaigns, as well as customised sales and messaging guidance. The strategy also incorporates new sales methodology training, which will focus on the importance of engaging with end-users and helping them transform their business processes, rather than focusing purely on technical details of ICT solutions. This is particularly important with smaller companies which often have limited IT expertise.
In addition, partners will benefit from a new incentive scheme, with rewards for high SME sales volumes. Business partners selling the recently launched Alcatel-Lucent Office Communication Solutions 2008 – which includes IP infrastructure, telephony, mobility, collaboration, knowledge sharing features and open source applications – and other Alcatel-Lucent converged voice and data solutions will be eligible for the highest value incentives.
“We have always worked closely with Alcatel-Lucent and this new strategy is helping us put resources into a growing and profitable market. SME sales offer high margins and so the support we receive from Alcatel-Lucent will help us significantly boost our revenue,” said Andrew Terry, managing director at Switch. “From helping us refresh our telesales scripts to brainstorming ideas, the support team is allowing us to re-energise our own SME sales efforts in the ever-changing market.”
In conjunction with the new SME strategy, Alcatel-Lucent is relaunching its demand generation and sales positioning campaign, Business in Motion, following a successful initial run. This targets organisations with a high percentage of mobile workers requiring continued network access and connectivity, and helps partners identify mobility solutions that can increase their productivity.
“Alcatel-Lucent is fully focused on helping organisations transform themselves into dynamic enterprises regardless of their size – this means better equipping our business partners to meet the specific demands of small businesses,” said David Parker, vice president for Alcatel-Lucent's enterprise activities, UK&I. “We understand just how lucrative this market is. Our new SME strategy will help all of our partners facilitate further growth by arming them with the tools they need to reach these new markets and increase sales, while giving us a chance to reward them for their efforts in proactively selling our solutions.”