I began my career by working for a telecommunications company and learning that industry in the early 1980’s. It was during the transitional time after Judge Green divested the monopoly of AT&T. My good friend’s brother, an entrepreneur, decided he would start a retail business selling telephones to consumers. After some initial resistance, at the time people thought owning a phone was against the law, the business grew. The retail floor sales process was simple; “see that trimline phone you currently rent from the phone company for $4.25 per month?” ”I can sell it to you for $49.99, it will pay for itself in 10 months!” Thus my sales career, and my understanding of the return on investment (ROI), began. Soon companies in the burgeoning field of consumer electronics caught on, cheap phones flooded the market and margins shrunk quickly. From this I learned about the commoditization of a product and how selling the value of services, not just products, can help the specialist survive.
For that company to survive it had to evolve. It then transformed into a business to business telecommunications and phone systems solution provider. The entrepreneur that founded the business became the CEO as well as the sales manager. I recall very well a mantra he would repeat many Monday mornings at our sales meetings: “you sell with these (pointing to his ears) not with this (pointing to his mouth)!”
Since that time I have helped customers in telecommunications networks, equipment, datacenter and IT. My datacenter experience led me to an in depth understanding of virtualization and the cloud. In both my IT managed services organizations as well as the datacenter, I spent large amounts of time on the healthcare regulatory environment. (HIPAA)
The selling advice I mentioned above has helped me greatly in my career and is the reason we decided to call our consultancy “Two Ears One Mouth”.
We will meet with you, listen to your needs and help you solve your problems. If we can’t solve problems, we will find someone who will.
Thought for the day…
Have your IT partners shown their appreciation for you today or are they content with the status quo? We want to help your business!
Two Ears One Mouth IT Consulting 