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TMC President Rich Tehrani (News - Alert) wrote about six weeks ago about the importance of marketing during this economic downturn, as businesses seek to forge relationships with companies that are launching new products and winning customers – and as the recession presents an opportunity to pick up market share.

 

In his more than 20 years in the communications technology space, Tehrani said he found that companies who cut back on marketing go under sooner than others.

 

“The most amazing statement I have heard in my career – and I am hearing it frequently these days – is, ‘We are waiting for sales to pick up so we can start marketing.’ This is the equivalent of going to the fireplace and telling it you are waiting for it to produce heat before you put a log in,” Tehrani writes. “This is obviously lunacy.”

 

Naturally, it also helps if there’s real substance behind the promise – and that’s exactly what could make 2009 a breakthrough year for a Sunnyvale, California-based company whose IP-PBX (News - Alert) systems, centered on a single-server design, are geared toward SMBs.

 

 

“We’ve doubled the size of our marketing department in the last 60 days,” Kerbage told TMCnet. “We continue to invest into our people, our engineering and our R&D to create new products and more compelling features.”

 

Many of those features, which Kerbage unveiled for the first time today, will bolster Zultys’ (News - Alert) MX offerings, which combine an IP PBX (with voice mail and automated attendants), data communications servers, and security features. They also add user visibility/presence, instant messaging, fax origination and termination and call center capabilities.

 

The company, whose products overwhelmingly are software-based, plans to introduce so-called “cell phone twinning,” Kerbage said, or the ability to ring a desktop and cell phone at same time and pick up from either place. Zultys also will roll out a new “FindMe” feature – an updated version of Find Me/Follow Me features that the company introduced seven years ago, that will be able to direct 16 calls at the same time.

 

“Another (new feature) that’s pretty revolutionary is called ‘Connect Anwhere,’ and it’s binding to PSTN devices,” said Kerbage, pictured left. “It’s very useful. Let’s say you have a home phone and no Internet connection or a lousy Internet connection at the house. With this, you can your home phone an extension of the IP-PBX at the office.”

 

The company also is rolling out a port-mapping feature, which will do SIP “network address translation,” or “NAT” traversal.

 

“Up until now most vendors have to put an appliance up on the WAN, which makes for insecure teleworking,” Kerbage said. “What we do is put it behind firewall using NAT traversal.”

 

Zultys also is adding other things, such as IVR functionality out of the box, and – taken together – is calling its new features for 2009 “the competition killer,” Kerbage said.

Since making its investment in marketing, Kerbage said, Zultys has forged eight new OEM relationships – including one with Avistar that TMCnet’s Patrick Barnard reports on here – as well as with babyTEL, BandTel and Cbeyond.

 

In addition, Kerbage said, Zultys’ platform worked out of the box with the new video phone – the VVX 1500 – from Polycom, Inc., a device that TMC (News - Alert) Vice President and CTO Tom Keating reviews here.

 

According to Kerbage, Zultys also forged nearly a dozen new relationships with dealers in just two days at last month’s Internet Telephony Conference & Expo – an event whose next two dates recently were announced by TMC.

 

“The ITEXPO (News - Alert) has been terrific for us, probably one of the best marketing investments we have done in 2009,” Kerbage said. “Where else can you go, and in two days, in one place, and find 10 dealers?”

 

For Tehrani, who serves as chairman for the ITEXPO, smart companies realize there are fewer dollars out there – and to keep sales on par with last year or just to keep from losing money, they need to take market share from others.

 

“Nine out of ten times this is done by out-marketing the competition,” he writes. “In order to take market share you must increase mindshare and marketing – whether you use better SEO, trade shows, webinars, social media or other vehicles.”