LDF Consulting

Cisco Smartnet Contracts

2006-12-01T02:51:00.000-08:00

In the Cisco world I've found that often companies have no clue as to who
sold them their Cisco Smartnet Contract. This is can be caused by
employees changing jobs or just not having the documentation on hand. You
know you have to protect your equipment but once you're under contract it's "out
of site, out of mind". That is until your switch goes down.

A switch dieing never happens at a convenient time. You want to plan
your disasters. The worst case scenario is to walk into your office and
find you network is down. Now who do you call? Is you Smartnet
contract up to date?

To help companies with their Cisco
Smartnet Contract renewals, I've set up a website to help companies renew
their contracts or to order new. Available nation wide, this service
helps customers walk through getting the help they need with ordering new or
renewing their Cisco Service Contracts. A live agent will assist you.

So check you Cisco contracts. If it's coming up for renewal or you
don't have one, protect your company and get one.

LDF Consulting.

Telecom Lead Generation

2006-10-26T16:04:00.000-07:00

One of some of the free services I offer is a place to list
Telrad Dealers to have their dealerships
listed for free. I make money off of the Google ads on the site so it is
in my best interest to ensure that I have good placement on the search engine
placements. Part of the skills I offer is the ability to "Generate
Leads" for businesses. Since I am a voice specialist I have focused on the
Telecom industry and have done quite well. People are searching all
the time for dealers of specific products in their area and I've been able to
use my search engine placement skill to create a unique tool for generating
leads. The Telrad Dealer website is just that. A free lead
generation system for Telrad Telephone System Dealers.

But I think many people are a little short sighted as to the possibilities. One conversation I had with a Telecom marketing specialist really dramatized a
point to me. I had tried to make suggestions that there were some
things he should do to help move his website up to the upper levels of Google,
Yahoo! and MSN and his reaction actually astounded me. He actually
said "We don't sell anything on the internet." Now this was actually
someone who thought that paying nearly $1000 dollars a month for a Yellow Pages
ad was really a good idea. Now bear in mind that the Yellow Pages are a
necessary evil still in this world but ask yourself this question: How
often do I use the Yellow Pages compared to an Internet search engine?
Since you're reading this blog I'd bet it would be a ratio around 1000 to 1?
Now if you're using the internet 1000 times more than the phone book would you
want to try and be sure that YOUR business is found somewhere in the top ten of
a user's search result when they are looking for the product or service you
offer?

If you did a quick search on MSN or Google for Telrad Dealers i n your state, chances are extremely likely that the number one position is held by www.T-RadTalk.com. Yes, that would be one of my websites. It generates leads for a lot of dealers.

But lets just say that I could offer dealers, not just Telrad Dealers, an
exclusive listing with guaranteed results. What would be the value
of that? What would be the loss if your competitor held that
position? Consider all the phone calls that are self qualifying
leads coming in every month.

It seems to me that many dealers, and again not just Telrad dealers, have no clue what their cost of customer acquisition is. Add up the hours spent cold calling, Yellow Pages ads and other media and the cost can be considerable. All this of course generates "Branding" and incoming calls but how much is being missed by "Not selling anything" on the Internet?

Right now, my Telrad Dealership listing is free. I've no plans to
change that. (I would like to the people that sign on for a link from
their website to one of my own. Strictly non competitive and not required
but I would like you to consider it.) However if you happen to be
telecom dealer for other systems I can generate a guaranteed top level placement
in the search engines and if I can't do what I say I can do then the most it
would cost to try is $20 flat. Think of all the leads you could
gather with top placements for keywords such as "Texas
Nortel Dealers" (Oh and by the way, that's our website too.)

So if you are interested in having me help you out with Internet Lead
Generation, simple contact me through
www.LDFConsulting.com

Nortel Dealers Getting Stiffed.

2006-10-24T17:11:00.000-07:00

First Blog Post.
Huge things happening between Nortel and their dealers. Sources have told me that they are now going to start charging their dealers approximately $300 per hour for tech support with an one hour minimum. This is not good news for dealers since Nortel hasn't made it easy to locate their numerous patches and frequently require calls to support. Products with non-current software releases (read a couple years behind) will cost the dealers even more for support.

The bad news hits the end customer since there won't be much choice than to raise prices to cover their higher cost making other products much more competitive. Dealers will now have to closely assess their own options as current customers begin drifting away towards products that are better for their own bottom line. Once this starts happening, currently dealers are forced to offer other solutions or quit the business. For the end user this means that the phone system that has run without issue for several years suddenly develops a problem and their dealer may not even exist any longer.

Sources have told me that some dealers are considering a type of "Federation" to apply pressure to Nortel to try and get them to change the policy. Perhaps this federation may also be used to develop their own tech support services. In my view I can't see this working. Perhaps pressuring Nortel may work but a common tech support center of affiliated dealers wont. The competitiveness of the situation couldn't help but doom it to failure. More monies lost and more executive bonus tossed away.

Lets hope that for everyone's sake that either the rumors are unfounded or that Nortel Changes it's mind.

I'm also hearing reports from technicians coming out of the SBC now AT&T system that the company is seriously considering dumping all of it's legacy support contracts. That means if you are running a Nortel PBX, even if it is current, you will no longer be serviced by AT&T. More to come on this but my initial feelings are that could be a good thing for the customers. Many large customer had complained about the service they were getting. Now just imagine finding better service because the major player in the region has decided you aren't worth the trouble.

www.AAVoicePro.com
www.MichiganNortelService.com