Outsourcing the time consuming task of screening prospects by phone has helped Motorola's Passive Optical LAN (POL) division generate potential leads for its reseller network.
The target audience for the POL fiber optic network systems is anyone who needs IT infrastructure for a new building or renovation. The price point makes it a financial fit for installations at workplaces employing 150 people or more—"the bigger you get, the more sense it makes from a cost savings perspective," says David Scott, director at Motorola.
The sales cycle typically runs nine to 18 months, depending on the size of the project and whether it is a renovation or a new building, he says, noting that the systems need to be installed early in a process as cables need to be run into the building.
Motorola, which works with about 50 value added resellers (VARs) in North America to market the technology, began working with AG about a year ago. The biggest short term challenge for Motorola is always finding where potential project installations are, notes Scott.
"If you start cold calling every company you can find, how many would actually have new projects?" he says, noting that in the past it was a very laborious process to research real estate bulletin boards for potential leads. "It ends up being a lot of calls."
Farming out the initial phase of the calling cycle to AG Salesworks has allowed Motorola to streamline its process. AG looks at construction databases and uses webinars and marketing inquiries with industry magazines to find clients at the consideration stage for IT infrastructure. Channel partners also provide lists for AG to call.
"A lot of the smaller VARs don't have big staffs or the resources to call people," says Scott. "We can give the lists to AG to follow up on and research where the projects are that we're a fit for, because it's not a simple process. I can't just go sell [the technology] to anybody at any time."
AG provides about seven to 10 opportunities a month to Motorola, looking primarily for active projects with a need (and the necessary budget) to put IT infrastructure into place within the next 12 months.
"For the most part, we're trying to get Motorola leads that are as qualified an opportunity as possible," says Craig Ferrara, director of client operations at AG Salesworks. "We're doing cold calls to get an insight on whether prospects in areas like education, federal or healthcare have new construction going on, and whether they're thinking about fiber or cabling infrastructure."
Two individuals on the AG team familiar with the Passive Optical LAN tech are dedicated to making calls for Motorola. The individuals they call range from IT directors—because you need to get them into the loop early, even if they aren't the ones making the financial decision—to architecture firms. "If they're doing blueprints, they need to know where to put the fiber in," explains Ferrara. "There's a lot of players involved, because the planning begins at the core of the project. Retrofitting is a huge expense."
The competition in the space comes in large part not from other companies, but from the concept of sticking with the legacy technology people are used to, because that's the way they've been operating for years. "That's the number one challenge, convincing people to do something different," he notes.
Scott admits that Motorola hasn't yet found the "secret sauce" when it comes to changing prospects' minds to try something new. "Advertising is too broad. We've tried trade shows but the ROI isn't that good. What we've found is that the outbound calling is a good investment, as are highly focused webinars with partners like Gartner or CIO Magazine."
Why do these approaches work? "Passive Optical LAN isn't necessarily a new technology, but it is a new solution using an existing technology," says Scott. "People need to talk to another human being to really understand it."
"People don't understand bringing fiber to the desktop," agrees Ferrara. "Tech guys tend to be set in their ways, but people are beginning to see the benefits."
