B2B sales in telecom: How to interest a client?

On duty of my work, I constantly have to communicate with customers - both existing and potential. Yes permanent residents of Habra will not condemn me with shame, my profession is Sales Manager for corporate clients.
Rather, my profession (or rather, the specialty assigned at the end of the university) is called Computer Science Analyst, and the manager is my current position, but this is subtlety.

I sell telecommunication services. These are communication channels, VPNs, Internet access channels, measured in tens and hundreds of megabits per second. Due to the specifics of the company's business and our network (namely, the lack of widely distributed local broadband networks, but the presence of a good backbone network), my main clients are large industrial and commercial companies - banks, factories, factories and other corporations with offices throughout Russia branches. Some arguments about the future of this market are reflected in the publication.
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Statement of a question

I think there is no need to explain that nobody canceled plans for sales and development, and operators, including us, always want to have more than they have at the moment. Since in large cities (and the branches of our clients are usually located precisely in them, and there is more interest in them), there is no shortage of telecom operators - naturally, the competition between operators is constantly increasing. The market of operators in such cities has long been saturated, and the question “How to interest the client” arises very urgently for operators.

Of course, the answer "Quality" in the context of this article is not considered. After all, if a provider cannot provide a quality service, then this is the first thing he needs to work on. Otherwise, the market has nothing to do with it. I am speaking more about the commercial and marketing moves of the provider.

Potential corporate customers of a typical telecom operator can be divided into 2 groups: those who just want to start receiving the service and those who already receive it from someone.

Not yet using the service

Now in the Russian business there are practically no companies that need to build a corporate VPN from scratch. The conquest by operators of just such companies, as a rule, comes down solely to the price struggle. Such customers are not very sophisticated in related services, and all they need is a quality provision of the main service: a communication channel (or VPN network). Therefore, in this segment, the competition is built on the principle of “who managed - he ate”, that is, the client buys the service from the operator who first came up with reasonable prices.

Already using the service

The second group - those companies that already receive this service - is more demanding on their provider. They are constantly looking for business solutions that will take off the burden of non-core for the company. Naturally, in the field of communications, they are primarily looking for such solutions from their current providers. It is from here that the roots of the practice of serving services in “packages” come, receiving, for example, the Internet, communication channels, telephony, co-location services from one provider. Nobody argues - so much more convenient for the client. Moreover, this allows the operator to “push” the client more onto himself - the client is unlikely to refuse all the provider services at once. After all, some of them are very problematic to transpose to another supplier. Which is quite logical, I am looking for “new money”, as a rule, among the clients of this group, since they are much larger than the first.

Monopoly?

Thus, we get a situation in which the market begins to monopolize - the larger players (providers of the "big four") with the help of complex, sometimes non-core services lure away an increasing number of customers, while smaller players are left to derive income from very slowly renewable source - the companies of the first group, which just began to seriously develop. Moreover, against the background of constantly becoming cheaper telecommunications services, it is simply not profitable to make a major investment in the development of the network.

My clients constantly link to our competitors with more interesting offers. One of them asked: “And what can you give such a thing that your competitor cannot give? What are you better at? Moreover, such a question from potential customers, which I’m trying hard to bring to cooperation with our company, looks logical. After several times I found it difficult to give a reasoned answer to this completely lying question, I wondered. And in my head I had my own question.

Topic for discussion

So what is the future of the market for telecom operators in the corporate sales segment? Does all this mean that in 10 years the large operators will capture the entire market and will not allow newcomers to breathe?

My opinion is unequivocal "Yes." Certainly, there will be local providers that will provide services to small SOHO-business - to extend the Internet to offices, to organize a network in the city or even in the region. But in the segment of sales described by me to corporate clients in the scale of Russia, the trunk providers will have a very limited number. Smaller players need to urgently invent new related services, unique services in order to attract new customers and retain existing ones. Either it is necessary to simply surrender under the onslaught of the “bigwigs” of the business. After all, there are large providers who can answer the question of my client, and ultimately lure my entire customer base to him. Well-established personal relationships with them will not help either.

I would like to see the opinion of habrazhiteley on this subject. Maybe I think narrowly?

PS The backbone providers have another line of business - this is the inter-carrier segment. In it, in fact, there are 2 main services - the Internet (or its individual segments, connectivity, IX-s) and communication channels. And these services are almost impossible to supplement. Should such providers, like my employer, throw all their strength on the development of this particular direction, resigned to the imminent stagnation of the corporate sales market?