Exploring the ways Lync can deliver a return on its investment
I talk to a lot of businesses about Lync. One of the first questions they ask is how much does Lync cost. I don't answer that question outright. Instead I ask them to consider how much it costs them NOT to have Lync.
Profile them
To understand how much it costs a business not to have Lync you need to profile the business. You need to find out things like number of staff, number of offices, and how they communicate internally and externally. But you must dig a bit deeper to find some benefits. Ask things like; how many of your staff work from home; how many staff work from several offices; how much communications is there between branches; do they use subscription based conferencing facilities; do they have on-premise video conferencing infrastructure; do they regularly travel to attend client meetings? Ask those questions and you'll start to uncover their need for Lync. But you'll also start to uncover ways they can save money. Next, ask them to consider the cost of the subscription based conferencing facility, and inter-site communications, and mobile phone bills and air fare and the cost of support of the video infrastructure. All these things add up to a lot more than most people think.
Paint a picture
Now that you have them thinking about how much money they spend on all of their current forms of communications you can take it up a notch. Get them thinking about how they use them. Get them thinking about how they book a meeting in the conferencing facility. Get them thinking about how they book resources for video conferencing. Then you show them Lync. Show them how easy it is to perform these tasks in the single client.
The best way to paint them a picture is to get them to describe how they use the systems they use them now and then show them how they would do the same things in Lync.
So not only do they save money by no longer paying for the subscription based things and the air travel for a meeting they could do from their garden. They save money on lost productivity. Everyone becomes more efficient.
When we used to talk to people about VoIP, the common selling technique was to figure out how much inter-site voice there was and say that its now free as it goes across the WAN. Now everyone has some kind of VoIP so they are already enjoying that. Lync can save them so much more money and time with everything it can do that it is almost a no brainer.
Conclusion
Everyone needs Lync and given enough time, Lync is free.
