Business Phone Systems: NEVER shop for a new system before doing these 2 things

Your company is looking for a new business phone system, but before you even shop for a new system make sure you check your contracts.

In this video, I explain 2 BIG mistakes to avoid when shopping for a new phone system.

Want my recommendations on the Best Business Phone Systems to quote? Click the button below and ask me today.

About Me

Mike Smith has been helping companies select the best telecom, WAN, security, and cloud services since 1999. He founded AeroCom in 2003, and has been the recipient of numerous business telecommunications industry awards, including being recognized as one of the top 40 business people in tech-heavy Orange County, CA. Follow Mike on YouTube, LinkedIn, Reddit and SpiceWorks.

Transcript

So as you can tell by the gray hair I’ve been selling telecommunications services to businesses for over 20 years. through that time, I’ve had to take my lumps and learn some things. The hard way. So today I wanted to share with you some of my experiences of the things, two things specifically that you definitely want to do before your you go shopping for a phone system. Never start shopping for a phone system until you do these two things. Otherwise, you’re going to get a lot of pain.

Reach out contact me for my recommendations

But before I get started. real quick, if you’d like a shortcut, if you’d like to make a more just a more informed decision, a better decision, and a fraction of the time invested by you in terms of research, when you’re shopping for new phones and just reach out and contact me. I’m a broker for all the major service providers. Within a few questions, I can tell you which service providers you should be quoting and help you get those quotes. Make sure you get the best pricing, all that stuff. And again, you’ll make a better, more informed decision in a fraction of the time and it won’t cost your business a thing. So reach out, contact me, send me an email, give me a call (714.593.0011). It’s the reason why I do these videos. I’d love to help you.

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if you’re not quite ready to talk to me yet. And you’d still like to do some research, Gordon, go check out our website. Arrow coming Tor.com Search for business phone systems in the search bar and you can actually sort through providers on the left hand side column by features for business phone systems, depending on what your company needs. So guarantee you’ve never seen anything like this before. Go to our website, check it out. And while you’re there, leave a couple reviews. That will be awesome. And as always, don’t forget to hit the like button. Subscribe to the channel and ring the bell. I love it.

NEVER Shop for a new phone system until you’ve done these 2 things

You never want to go shopping for a new phone system for your company before you’ve done two things. How do I know this? Well, for over 20 years, I’ve been selling business telecommunications services to companies, and I’ve had to live out this mistake a couple of times. So the first thing you always want to do before you go shopping is check your contract status with your current telecommunications dial tone provider. So whoever the provider is that’s providing your company with CIP trunks cloud PBX services currently pre services or analog lines, whatever your company has today that’s providing you dial tone or phone system, things like that.

1. Check the contracts.

You don’t know how many times. Oh, ask a company, have you checked your contracts or are you guys in a contract curling with your telecom provider and the the IT department all tell time. You know we’re we’re not in a contract and then come to find out later once they’ve already gone through all the hours of demos analyzing quotes proofs of concept and all this stuff and they go to switch providers and they realize they were in a contract, there was a little snafu that they didn’t realize that they’re stuck in that contract and now they’re in two contracts at the same time. And now you’re in a lot of trouble because both contracts have early termination penalties and they’re both going to get ugly with you. So definitely check your contracts in a little note there. Just because that your original term has expired does not mean you’re not in contract.

Check if your contract auto renews

 So most telecommunication service providers have an auto renewal clause. So that means as soon as your contract is up, they auto renew you sometimes for one year at a time, but sometimes it’s the auto renew you for your initial term. So if your initial term was three years, they auto renew you for another three years. that can really add up and customers will say, isn’t there a buyout clause? No, no new service provider is going to ever be able to buy you out of a long term contract. I mean, maybe a couple months. They might give you a couple of months for free. But, you know, if you’re if you’re committed to your current service provider for $1,000 a month or more, sometimes it’s like $5,000 a month, no new service provider is going to be able to pay out that contract if you still are in it for like a year to two years longer, they can’t pay out, you know, $12,000, $24,000, $50,000 in early termination penalties. There’s just no way they can give you a month or two for free. But that’s about it. So don’t expect the new service provider to be able to pay out your existing contract.

Notify the service provider about not renewing your contract early

Also, just because you’re at the end of a contract and you think the service, hey, we’re going to renew and or a renewal date is like you know, three months from now. So we’re good to go. We’re going to let them know that that we’re not renewing. You want to be really careful about that again, because there’s little gotchas in those contracts. So sometimes the contracts will say you have to notify the service provider like 90 days in advance in order to avoid an auto renewal. So sometimes you’ve already auto renewed and you’re just like still 60 days out from your contract end date. Yet they’ve already auto renew you. So you got to be really careful with that in terms of when the contracts ending and when you know you notify them how you notify them, sometimes they want you to notify them in writing. It’s all these little tricks that they’re playing in order to auto renew. It’s pretty unethical, in my opinion. But it happens. It is what it is. And I just want to make sure that before you go shopping for a service provider, number one, make sure you’re not in a contract with your current service provider for dial tone.

Don’t end up being in 2 contracts

So that’s your PRI or your CIP trunks or your analog lines, or maybe it’s in a cloud PBX phone service that you’re currently signed up with that you’re not happy with, because that could be a really painful process to go through if you end up being with two providers at the same time. So you’re going to get dinged one way or the other. And unfortunately it might fall on the department’s head of, Hey, why did you sign this contract? Why didn’t you do your due diligence to check that we’re not in this contract? So really big, painful thing that I’ve experienced one too many times. And it’s just something that unfortunately, there’s no way for me to know it.

Don’t go to sales go to your billing department

If you reach out to me, the only way you can do it is to call your current service provider, talk to their billing department. If they send you to sales. Refuse to go to sales, talk to their billing department, ask them to produce the proof of the contract that you signed. The writing that says, Did you order renewed all that good stuff? Don’t let them just send you to a sales rep and let them tell you over the phone what’s going on, because sometimes, unfortunately, they’re unethical as well and they’re telling you false information. Make sure they give you the actual scanned documents that you signed that say that you are renewed, that what the auto renewal clause is, if you do call them to tell them you want to move to a month to month at the end of the contract, Also make sure you get a reference number for that conversation so that in the future, if there’s ever any dispute, you have a reference number, you have an email that you receive from the customer service department proving that you told them that at the end of the contract you wanted to opt to a month to month agreement.

So that’s number one. Make sure you do that before you get into any into any new contract or even shop for services.

2. Check your telecom maintenance contract

The second thing you want to do before you go shopping anywhere is also check with if you’re with an on prem. If you have an on prem phone system today, check to make sure you’re not in a maintenance contract with your current phone system vendor. So the var that’s taking care of your current phone system with ads, moves, changes, all that type of stuff, you want to make sure that you’re not in a long term maintenance contract with them as well, because I’ve run into that too. Sometimes we go through the whole quoting process, all that stuff. They go, Oh no, I didn’t realize we have another year and a half left with our current on prem phone system vendor for maintenance contract and say it’s like $1,000 a month on a maintenance contract. Well, you don’t want to pay out, you know, $18,000 or whatever it’s going to cost to get out of that contract or just pay it out as you go when you’re not even using that phone system anymore. Nobody wants to do that. So check on that as well. So those are two things to do. Never, ever go shop for a new phone system before you do those two things. Okay. All right. So that’s what I have for you today.

Reach out and contact me

Again, if you’d like my recommendations on the best cloud PBX phone system vendors to quote for your company, don’t Google it and search all day long. Just reach out and contact me. That’s my job. I’m a broker for all the major phone systems service providers out there, and I’ve been doing this for over 20 years. I know all the major players and I know all their niches and what they fit best in, So I’ll help you make a lot better decision and a lot less time and with a lot less time invested. If you just reach out semi email, give me a call 714.593.0011). I’m happy to help and I’ll make sure that you get paired up with the right sales reps at the right vendors. Oversee the coding process for you to make sure you get the lowest pricing on the vendors of your choice. Also make sure that everything goes smoothly. Okay, so reach out. Contact me in the nice thing is on top of all that, your company won’t have to pay me a dime. The service providers actually pay me my broker fee, so there’s absolutely no reason not to at least reach out and get my opinion on this stuff. Okay. And also,

Use our custom built search engine on our website

 hey, if you’re not quite ready for that, at least go check out our website arrow Come income and in the search bar, you can type in cloud phone systems and you can write reviews on phone systems. You can read reviews on phone systems. You can search cloud phone systems, service providers by feature availability, which is cool. You won’t find any other website out there that’s like this. We’ve spent thousands of dollars on this website to get it like that. So it’s super cool. You’ve never seen anything like it. Go check it out. And as always, like subscribe, ring the bell, help our videos get out to more people on YouTube. I’d really appreciate that too. And thanks for watching the video. I will catch you on the next one.