A Canadian company is looking to make its mark selling VoIP software to service providers by helping them master the tough economics of selling to small businesses through distributed sale channels.

Natural Convergence, a Canadian company, today introduced its flashpoint 1.0 Channel Marketing Program, intended to shorten sales cycles and help drive up revenues.

“The thing that kills most good product ideas is that the product managers don’t spend enough time on the channel,” said David Cork, CEO of Natural Convergence. “The small business market has very harsh economics – each business is small, they don’t have the money to spend. To reach them, it’s hard because they don’t have an IT staff to take care of this stuff. You have to be very careful about finding channels to reach those guys.”

And while there are value-added reseller (VAR) channels appropriate for selling sophisticated products to larger businesses, it’s harder to find VAR channels for lower margin gear, Cork said. That is why Natural Convergence set out to “build smart product and try to funnel it through a light channel,” he said. “The first thing we did was build a channel model and test the economics. Then we built products to fit the channel, not the other way around.”

The flashpoint 1.0 program announced today includes seven modules that focus on the key aspects of developing and training agents that can target small businesses. The seven modules can be bought together or separately. They include service definition, recruitment, custom sales training, lead generation, sales support, performance metrics, and recognition and incentives. Natural Convergence has either developed the modules themselves or partnered with companies who had that expertise, Cork said.

His company targets competitive carriers who are focused on the SMB market and looking to steal customers away from incumbent operators.

Key to the success of the flashpoint 1.0 is its unique ‘Two Call Close’ methodology, which supplies the service provider with the necessary tools to meet with a customer on the first call and present a proposal on the second call. This approach of compressing the timeline pervades every aspect of providing service to and tapping the small business market.

“We went to the product guys and wanted to know what do you use as channels,” Cork said. “They just can’t afford direct sales, so they focus on agents and resellers. Competitive guys embrace the VARs. We realized we needed to build a product that is an easy sale that does not require onsite local technical assistance, as a service provider, you can engage a whole range of agent channels that you can walk away from.”

That meant designing software that was highly automated and had customer self-service built into it, he said.

“The service can be signed up from a Web page, and to run it, a small business doesn’t need an IT guy – an office manager or secretary can mange the phone service,” Cork said.

At the heart of flashpoint 1.0 is something Natural Convergence calls a “Two Call Close” methodology, which provides an agent or VAR with the tools required to meet with a customer only twice and walk away with a sale.

“It is part of our sales training module,” Cork said. “This is one of the core value sets we learned early on. Small business guys don’t want someone to come visit to close the sale. So, with the Two-Call Close, the agent walks in the first time, and is able to understand the small business owners’ concerns, biases and blockages and then come back the second time with a proposal. It isn’t about closing skills, it’s about showing them a cogent plan for deployment. We think that a quick sales cycle is essential for profitability.”

Another essential piece is getting the service bundle right the first time, he added. It makes more sense to bundle access services into value-added services, and to bundle voice and data, Cork said. In the flashpoint 1.0 service definition module, service providers can determine their best product bundle going forward.

Natural Convergence will continue to develop the flashpoint capabilities and expects to see future releases as new functionality is introduced.