By Betsy Cummings
Jack Magnusen believes that sometimes the product speaks for itself. The director of sales for Clarity Communications Systems, a communications company based in Aurora, Ill., that offers push-to-talk cellular service, knew the best (and possibly only) way to convince prospects to buy his service was to show them how it worked.
He tried this strategy out on Illinois Valley Cellular at a regional tradeshow last fall. First Magnusen placed a cold call to the company, then followed that up with an in-show meeting at Illinois Valley's booth, armed with nothing but two cell phones and his best elevator pitch. "I asked for a few minutes to introduce myself, then I showed them how [the product] works, told them there's nothing to buy, they don't have to learn how to operate anything, and they don't have to be trained," Magnusen says.
The company's reps were intrigued. To sweeten the deal, Magnusen offered to loan them 15 phones to test with their own employees. The phones worked and so did Magnusen's pitch. The client decided push-to-talk technology might help them gain market share among their own cell-phone clients. "It's really an opportunity for these small carriers who have never been able to spend a million dollars for a push-to-talk system," Magnusen says. The return on the investment is substantia because with Clarity's phones, clients pay a service fee for the push-to-talk capability, but nothing for the equipment, he says.
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