Nortel gets game

Canadian-based Nortel Networks last week announced it was expanding its nascent small- and midsize-business networking portfolio with two new data products. It also and upgraded its SMB VoIP offering.

Nortel also is adding new sales training and marketing tools for its channel partners targeting small and medium-sized bsinesses.

The announcement follows a major SMB channel push that began with the launch of Nortel’s first SMB data networking products in June.

Richard Solosky, director of product marketing at Nortel, told CRN.com that “The goal here is to try to strengthen our SMB portfolio so we make it easier for the channel and our partners to sell converged SMB solutions."

Congrats to Nortel (from a long-suffering shareholder) for getting into the groove. Their needs may be different from those of enterprise-sized clients, but small and medium-sized businesses account for more than 90% of the prospects out there – and they're not as cheap as you think. When they have a problem, they need it fixed fast.

The Power of Options

I was talking recently to an insurance agent who specializes in working with high-income professionals and entrepreneurs. He’s quite selective and does very well, making sure that prospects understand his expectations and ways of doing things before he takes them on as clients.

Even so, however, he agrees that entrepreneurs can be a tough sell. He lives by two rules:

1) Full disclosure: He makes sure clients understand what he sells, why he sells them, and where his income comes from. And he makes sure that he personally owns every product that he sells. If it’s not good enough for him, it’s not good enough for his clients.

2) Options: Once he understands his client’s needs, he researches them diligently and presents three or four different ways the entrepreneur can achieve his or her objectives. That gives him a chance to educate his clients by going through the alternatives, and, presumably, gives the entrepreneur a comfortable feeling of having some control in the process.

You can frame the planner’s conclusion:

“To get an entrepreneur to buy anything, you have to have full disclosure and options.”

I'm not saying they're cheap, but...

"Simply put, an entrepreneur is someone who can (creatively) do with a dollar, what any fool can do with two."
Bruce Firestone, Ottawa
Founder of the Ottawa Senators