The low end of the business market needs virtual office capabilities, too. At least thats what some hosted PBX vendors are saying about the distributed communications model that has heretofore been the province of large businesses by virtue of a large price tag.

In todays session, Making the Virtual Office a Reality for Small Businesses, agents can find out about the opportunities to offer their small business clients a system that will support mobile and remote workers. Panelists include Frank Paterno, vice president of marketing for Intelliverse; Robert Westervelt, vice president of indirect sales for Broadview Networks; and Eric Thomas, founder and CEO of FreedomVOICE Systems.

Session leader Peter Radizeski, president of agency RAD-INFO Inc., said the roundtable discussion will be agentfocused and intent on answering a few key questions: What are we selling? Who is the target market? How do you sell to that market? And whats the trigger for a sale to that market?

Some of the most interested companies fall into the real estate and legal verticals where there are many smaller offices distributed across a geographic area. In addition, any company with sales and marketing, IT or call center personnel has the potential need for a system that will handle a distributed and increasingly mobile workforce.

Hosted PBX offers a virtual office solution to these companies at a much lower cost basis than they would get with a premises-based solution.

In addition, they usually can get more features the addition of conference calling or message on hold at a lower cost.

Radizeski expects to tackle some agents objections, primarily concerns about their ability to make money on a service that often is sold for $30 a line per month. A 10-line sale means about $30 to an agent with a 10-point commission. If you get one phone call, youve lost your margin, he said.

Agent compensation and who handles customer service and implementation will be among the issues discussed by the panelists.