On the 25th of November 2021, the Pragma team successfully delivered their Ideas Lab 3.0 event digitally to an audience of channel partners. The event was hosted by Pragma’s Sales and Marketing Director Will Morey and produced alongside digital marketing partners GetCrisp.
The Ideas Lab presented a perfect opportunity to explore the hottest insights into seizing new opportunities from the latest technology offerings of iPECS.
Will began the presentation by explaining how the Cloud communications market is changing. Due to a more tech-savvy customer base and the ongoing need for digital transformation, sales and marketing teams need to take a different approach. Will emphasised the need to combine sales and marketing techniques to create a loyal customer base.
He added: “The traditional sales and marketing roles we previously knew are changing to accommodate the fast-paced digital selling environment. Sales and Marketing are increasingly becoming more integrated into one another – salespeople need to take on marketing roles and vice-versa. People still aren’t working in the office five days a week, so it’s important to integrate your process with remote selling and new techniques.”
Will Morey also introduced The Hub, a series of new tools available to channel partners. This includes a video library of helpful guides and demonstrations to share with customers, high-quality brochures, marketing tools and an intuitive quote builder.
Business Development Director Ed Savory explained how iPECS ONE utilises WebRTC technology to improve its user experience, collaboration, and cost-effectiveness. He also introduced some new features coming to iPECS ONE in 2022, such as Webchat and ACD.
Ed took attendees on a journey from WebRTC’s creation in 2011 to how it supports channel partners in 2021 and major brands like Google and Facebook.
Business Development Director Helen Ranaghan provided insights on how prioritising customer retention can help businesses to thrive. Commenting: “Everyone will highlight their great customer experience at the point of entry, but maintaining that service is another thing entirely.”
Helen provided a demo of the new iPECS Analytics suite, a brilliant solution for improving customer retention. iPECS Analytics includes new reporting and monitoring tools that help to enhance staff performance and ensure more successful marketing campaigns. iPECS Analytics will be launched to Pragma reseller partners in Q1 of 2022.
The final speaker of the day was Richard Knight, Director of GetCrisp. Richard highlighted how using social media can generate sales leads through referrals.
LinkedIn has 700m users, and conversions on this platform are 3x higher than any other. Richard explained how the leverage of previous good reviews allows sales staff to make inroads quicker and connect with decision-makers more effectively. He added: “Don’t be afraid to get your personality across; if you’re happy to say it in a meeting, you should be happy to say it on social media.”
If you missed this year’s Ideas Lab, don’t worry. Each presentation will be available to watch on the Pragma website in the coming weeks.
