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It’s changing how we work and this is set to be the year of the Cloud but is that making it any easier for people selling Hosted Exchange?

Becoming a Hosted Exchange reseller is an attractive proposition for many an IT business. Whether selling it as a standalone product or with your own web-hosting it can offer your clients a cost-effective solution as well as making you some money. It is about diversification; many online businesses trade on their knowledge of how the internet works and how it can benefit business. Taking the next step and reselling Hosted Exchange to provide clients with hosted email, contacts, calendars and work places is a logical jump. It is also one that needs an element of planning.

If this is a viable route for your business, what do you need to know?

First, know what you’re reselling. The most successful sales teams pride themselves on knowing their industry and business inside out. What is the best way to do that? Try it yourself and have a go. We can read all the T and C’s, blogs and articles we like but for the majority of us we only truly learn the benefits of a new tool or technique or how something works by having a go ourselves. Remember if you’re pitching Hosted Exchange to a client you’re putting your expertise on the line. If you can’t answer a client’s questions clearly or communicate to them exactly the benefits they could be receiving, or more fundamentally exactly how Hosted Exchange works then they might begin to question how much you really know. At Giacom, our resellers can sign up for our exchange free of charge – if they sign up just after our billing period they’re able t0 trial our service for up to a month without paying a penny. That means they can sign up and try the service for themselves before they start looking for their own clients.

Understanding how Hosted Exchange works means understanding its unique selling point. It is cost-effective, often cheaper than having an office installed server, is easy to set-up with minimum fuss and interference and a dedicated handover strategy that shouldn’t mean you lost any business-time. These are things that clients really care about. They know they need to upgrade and to put in place and IT solution that makes it easier and more streamlined to run their business but they worry it will distract them from actually doing the job. Emphasising how easy it is to adopt Hosted Exchange, and how much easier it will make it for them to run their business is key. As a reseller the ease of Hosted exchange means you can take on more clients and get a more diverse and sound business model and successful revenue stream.

An important step is making business work is knowing your competition. The same goes if you are a Hosted Exchange reseller. Know your local market; know who is offering the same thing. That way you will be best placed to emphasise and sell the attributes you have that they might not. If you want to become a reseller you need to work with a provider that suits your needs, and those you are hoping in turn to sell. Every provider around the country is different, and every pocket of industry is equally diverse. You don’t want a provider that dictates what you can and can’t do. You need the freedom to make it work for yourself.

Understanding the product will show you that there are tiers in technology. You want to find a provider that sells the very best product and uses the most up-to-date services. Technology changes and develops so rapidly that you can often find yourself signing up to a deal that really will be obsolete in a matter of months. Your research will help you get an overview of where the Cloud industry is at, and what tools you’ll need to sell it.

Becoming a Hosted Exchange reseller requires real perseverance but it can be a successful and potentially lucrative option for those who want to offer their clients the very best. Doing the ground work and understanding what you’ll be offering to clients will help you build your name and reputation within the industry. Researching the latest technology as well as knowing what the competition is offering will help give you the edge.

Tags: Cloud computing, Cloud IT, cloud services, Exchange Hosting, Hosted Exchange, Hosted Exchange2010, IT Resellers, Reselling

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 10th, 2012 at 2:08 pm and is filed under Laura Brown. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.