Customers need training too
Do not neglect the potential return offered by customer training programmes, says Leon Mangan
Mangan: Customer training is often overlooked by both VAR and customer
One often overlooked area of differentiation is for resellers to focus on incorporating the training of customers into their market offering to enable end users to quickly and easily understand the benefits of the solution.
Many organisations are not taking advantage of the full range of features available to them from a given solution. In the telecommunications market, I believe that users tend to use just five – at best – of the two to 300 features that most phone systems offer.
There are many other examples of communications applications that could provide real productivity gains and cost efficiencies, if fully exploited by the end user. From what I’ve seen, nine times out of ten, this is due to a lack of training and overall understanding of the product or service’s full capability.
Not only does training help explain the potential benefits to the end user, once the overall business benefits start to show, it opens up new channels for additional business between the reseller and the customer, adding even more value.
In addition, the ability to prove a return on investment on smaller systems allows for future deal expansion, longer training contracts and more secured business.
Both resellers and customers need to adopt a new approach, as training should, I believe, realistically account for up to 30 per cent of the final cost.
Training also allows the reseller to demonstrate a much greater understanding of the customer’s business. It will enable the reseller to interact with all levels of the customer’s organisation, from C level to trainee, allowing the reseller to learn a great deal more about them, and how they use the system – putting them in a much stronger position to advise customers on where they need to make investments in the future.
For larger organisations, it can even open doors for up-selling within the company, across different departments.
For businesses to get real returns on their investments, they must fully maximise the applications they buy. A good reseller should insist on the importance of training, improving their customer’s business and ultimately theirs.
Leon Mangan is indirect channel sales director at Siemens Enterprise Communications
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