When I got into this business in 1985 the “PBX Big Three” was AT&T (Avaya / Lucent), Nortel and Siemens/Rolm. These products represented the “nobody ever got fired for buying X (insert one of the big 3 here)” method of thinking. Boy, I can’t begin to tell you how much I hated that. Sorry, post PBX sales fatigue flashback.
Today I got confirmation that the original Big Three has been replaced by the new and far superior Big Three. We all have seen Cisco flex their muscle and take over market share. You may or may not know about Shore-Tel’s dark horse run into prominence. The third member of the group, and in my opinion, the leader is the new Mitel. I say new due to their acquisition of Inter-Tel a few years back.
In the past, I had always considered Mitel to be an industry leader bringing a strong dealer network and quality products to the market, but, to be honest, a little boring.
All of that changed for me today. I had the opportunity to attend the grand opening of the Mitel Solution Center in Seattle. When you walk in the door the first impression you get is that you are about to see something very cool. That is just the beginning. The facility replicates an actual office environment with remote locations and off site employees. It is divided into separate technologies ranging from Unified Communications to Remote Teleworkers and everything in between. Every work station is completely integrated with the next. A potential customer can touch and feel every technology that they are evaluating and many other applications that they had not even considered. All of the call flow and features are used in real time right in front of you. Attention Customer: That is how you make an intelligent buying decision in this industry.
I could not help but think back to the days when I would sit in a conference room with a dead phone and demonstrate the features. The phone was not plugged into anything so I never made a mistake. It never made the wrong beep or flashed the wrong lights. You don’t loose many sales when the demonstration goes that smoothly. That style worked when the phones had 12 features with one feature being hold and yes, hold was actually a feature.
Needless to say, the days of 12 features are long gone and communications technology has taken on a life of its own. If you are evaluating a new communications platform for your business, you owe it to yourself to contact Mitel or one of their dealers and find one of these Mitel Solutions Centers in your city. Prepare to be impressed.
If you are wondering what my motivation is to give such a glowing review of this facility, there is none. In fact, the Mitel offices sell a carrier service offering, which actually makes them a direct competitor of mine. Now, to be completely honest, if I loose a carrier services deal to them in the future, I will probably come back and delete this post; especially if the customer says “nobody ever got fired for buying Mitel”
