**Editor's Note: Once you're done reading this article, check out our slide shows, “15 Client-Friendly Features of WEM" and “Overcoming Objections to Wireless Expense Management Sales," where Matt Coffy offers more expert tips and techniques for selling wireless expense management.**
As you determine how mobility products and services will be part of your portfolio, you should be aware of the opportunity to drive new income while helping your clients save money and time with wireless expense management.
The first in series on wireless expense management, this article will explore WEM basics and explain the opportunity for channel partners. Future articles will cover WEM for international services, carrier negotiation strategies, wireless management outsourcing and client management.
CHANNEL OPPORTUNITY
Many businesses feel they are spending more than they would like to for wireless service and related add-ons. The result is a growing market for channel partners to provide wireless expense management either themselves or through an outsourcer.
For the customer, WEM’s biggest selling point is saving 20 to 40 percent of monthly recurring costs on their wireless accounts. Plus there is nothing new to buy. Nothing physically changes in a customer’s existing wireless environment, except the carrier bill is reduced. The customer is not required to change carriers, handsets or carrier contacts.
The advantages of this opportunity for partners are many.
Open new doors. The WEM value proposition offers you an opportunity to open doors to new accounts that may not have been previously accessible.
Earn customer trust. A channel partner can gain trust from a customer by providing them with a thorough and methodical analysis of their wireless phone usage and pave the way for much clearer control over current spending and continued savings over the long haul.
Generate new revenue. When selling WEM, the general rule of thumb is to split a portion of the customer’s total monthly savings as the fee. Usually the split of the savings with the customer is accomplished over a term period of months or as an agreed upon amount of total monthly savings captured over a given period of time. If you use a vendor to perform the services for a customer, be sure to work through the details on how the customer will be billed and how long the saving split will last.
Here is an example of how a traditional WEM solution would pay out for a channel partner using an outside vendor. We find the average savings for a customer is about 30 percent, so we’ll assume this in the following example:
