Understanding Teleconferencing Sales Pitches
A big part of persuading a customer to use a product is to convince them that a certain feature or service is essential and unique to that vendor. Teleconferencing is no different. Have a look of what's on offer from the major providers in Australia.
We don't display prices because every customer is different
Translation: We want to see how much we can get away with charging you. We also can't let our existing customers know how much they are overpaying.
Single Bill
The telephone companies selling teleconferencing will tell you that they can provide all of your expenditure on one invoice. In practice this means you probably have no details of the conference calls. More convenient would be the ability to see details of every line connected to every conference call.
For some inexplicable reason, even though it is automated, telecommunications companies frequently bill their business customers incorrectly. We recommend that you check your bill periodically.
Single point of contact
Phone companies may tell you that you will have the same point of contact for conferencing as for their other services. In practice, to have a meaningful conversation about conferencing you will need to be referred to someone else.
You have a bigger stick if you put all of your telecom spend with us
Another telecom company pitch, meaning that they will take you more seriously if you spend more with them.
Most companies actually try harder when they see there is more business to win.
Web collaboration
Collaborating (document sharing) on the web is when all participants on the conference call share a document using the same web interface. A fantastic service/product but there are still very few users of web collaboration in Australia so this should probably not be a big deciding factor. If you want to use collaboration we recommend the multi award winning GoToMeeting from Citrix.
We are global
Unless you are spending over $50,000 per month on conferencing outside of Australia there is no real benefit. In fact this typically means that the company's services are built for the American market and the Australian business has very little input on anything.
We are a really big company so you can trust us
Once this used to mean something, but after a succession of high profile collapses from OneTel through to Enron and WorldCom, size no longer means stability. It is really easy to transfer conferencing services to a new provider if you need to.
You only pay for what you use
Which is how it should be of course but in reality all the service providers (except HotAir) round up every line to the nearest minute so you are in fact, paying for something you haven't used.
How much does the sales person cost me?
Every time you meet a sales person, it costs their employer over $300 and since they may need six or more visits to get one sale, your bill needs to cover $1,800 over and above the cost of the service.
