Earlier this year I was visiting a client who had recently launched a hosted PBX / UCaaS service, and the management team was excited to roll the service out to businesses in their service area.
In the course of my visit I was introduced to the inside sales team – who had been tasked with calling businesses in the area to introduce them to the new UCaaS service offering.
They had a simple question for me:
Who should we call?
Ummm…
I floundered for a minute, then managed to provide some fairly generic advice based on my experience (small businesses with 5-20 lines, professionals like lawyers are good, avoid hotels), but I realized in that moment that I didn’t have any real data to draw on.
Being a good consultant, I used my advanced research skills to look for a better answer:
After reading a few articles I gave up. There didn’t seem to be any real research examining which business market verticals were best for hosted PBX / UCaaS solutions – which seems crazy, because clearly there are some markets that will value the new features (mobility, multi-location businesses) more than others.
But I didn’t know what they were. And nor did Google.
UCaaS market vertical research
Undeterred, I figured maybe Award Consulting could help solve this problem, so over the past few months I’ve been working in partnership with Reinvent Telecom (one of our earliest clients) to research this topic and produce a report to help answer the question.
We looked at a large sample of businesses that currently use a Hosted PBX solution, and categorized them into 19 business verticals, in order to answer the following question:
What business verticals should your UCaaS sales team focus on to grow your business?
There are a lot of businesses that could use your services, but it can be hard to know where to begin. After reviewing this research, you will be able to focus your attention on those segments of the market that are proven to appreciate the value of a hosted PBX solution.
Top 10 hosted PBX market verticals
You can download the full report at the end of this article, but I know you’re probably most interested in the headline data.
Surprisingly, we found that the types of business that most frequently deployed hosted solutions are in the health care field. These include businesses, such as doctors, dentists and a variety of specialists.
The next verticals most commonly using hosted solutions are real estate and rental (where mobility features are a huge benefit) and professional services, which includes law offices, accountants, designers and consultants. After that comes finance and insurance companies, followed by retailers.
Repair and maintenance services — mostly consumer focused businesses such as plumbers, electricians and lawn care services – follow. Rounding out the top seven verticals most commonly purchasing hosted solutions are non-profits, community and religious organizations.
These seven vertical categories cover 75 percent of businesses in our data set, so it makes sense to focus your sales and marketing efforts — at least initially — on these segments.
In the full report we dig deeper into the kinds of businesses that make up each vertical, and we also ask another important question:
Do healthcare providers actually prefer UCaaS services, or are there just more healthcare providers than any other type of business?
For the answer to that question, and the full report, click the button below and submit your email address.
We’ll email you the link to download the full report, and you’ll also join our ongoing regular email list – with articles focused on the needs of independent voice service providers (especially those who own Metaswitch products). We send about 1 article each week, and we encourage you to reply to those emails with questions or suggestions for future content.
I hope you find this information useful in growing your business, and remember, if you need any assistance with the more technical aspects of launching or operating your Hosted PBX solution, check out our Hosted PBX services page.
