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XNet is proud to announce the next Silicon Prairie Social, to be held on Tuesday, April 28th at Arrowhead Golf Club in Wheaton. We’re looking forward to gathering again with a couple hundred friends and associates from the technology community.
If you’re an XNet customer or are looking at XNet to provide your colocation or dedicated server hosting service, by all means, come to the event and connect face-to-face with us. We’d love to have you there.
Earlier today I received a phone call from a local company with whom I’m quite familiar. The salesperson opened by saying, “I saw you opened our email today, what interested you in the email?” The message I had read was advertising a seminar series the company has been aggressively pushing.
Admittedly, I was taken aback. I felt like I was being watched. I also felt that if I had been interested in the email, I would have signed up for the seminar or responded with questions myself. All in all, my feelings were equal parts 1) creeped out, 2) mildly annoyed and 3) strangely intrigued that this is how they were still marketing after all of these years.
It didn’t stop there, however. My limp response to his dead-on-arrival opener behind us, he kept firing:
“Can I interest you in a free ebook?”
“What’s the e-book about?”
“Secrets of Success”
“Sure.”
“Can I also interest you in a free coaching session?”
Waaaait-a-minute!
Here’s where I should have asked, kindly, “What’s the catch?” instead of “no, thank you.” Given how the call had already gone, in retrospect I’d have loved to hear him describe the coaching session.
Their entire dialogue and approach to initiating and nurturing a relationship was broken from the very beginning. He was all about features, saying nothing about how I would benefit from reading his email, his e-book, or attending his coaching session.
Email marketing is an excellent, cost-effective way to nurture relationships that turn into leads. The analytics that come with most all email marketing platforms give you very useful information about who is reading what you write and sharing it with their friends. You can use this information to grow your business, however, it’s best not to creep out your prospect in the process.
So, what can you learn from today’s awkward call?
Here are three better ways you can handle calls to your targeted email lists:
Give a legitimate and non-creepy reason for your call. After first asking your prospect if you’ve caught them at a good time, mention something your company is doing that’s of immediate value, and communicate that value immediately. “Next week we’re hosting a seminar on helping sell more widgets. People who went to last year’s seminar tell us they’ve more than doubled their widget sales after putting into practice our techniques.” Now you have my attention, and you’re leading with value, not a hook.
If you’re calling a web lead, only offer one premium. This salesperson’s two eager offers; the vaguely-titled e-book and the equally mysterious “free coaching session,” screamed desperation. Though they were determined to hook me with something, they didn’t believe in it (or me) enough to tell me how I would benefit from any of it.
Instead of tiptoeing around your point, tell the prospect what’s in it for you while communicating value to them. This can be easily accomplished by filling them in some context. Something like this:
“Of the 200 professionals we coached last year, those who stuck with the program the entire year doubled their businesses in 12 months while building systems that allowed them to work on average 25% fewer hours. Could I interest you in a complimentary session with one of our executive coaches to discuss your objectives and how coaching can help you reach them?”
Do you have an example of an exceptional sales call you’ve received? An exceptionally poor one? If so, please leave a comment below, we’d love to hear it!
Last December, Matt Linderman from 37signals came to our offices with a camera crew to talk to us about how we’ve used their CRM tool Highrise to manage XNet’s sales pipeline and existing customers. We jumped at the opportunity to go on camera as we’re big fans of their simple, straightforward approach to software. Since early 2007, Highrise has been our tool of choice to manage the day-to-day contact we have from the moment we identify someone as a prospect through the lifecycle of the customer relationship. It helps us stay on top of myriad details, track activities, and keep oriented toward the next step.
Have fun watching Arthur and Tim talk about how we use Highrise at XNet! If you are looking at a CRM and want to talk with us in-depth about Highrise versus others CRMs we’ve looked at and their plusses and minuses, don’t hesitate to call.
We’re happy to announce we’ll be hosting “Very Prairie Christmas 2008” on December 4th, an informal after-hours gathering we’re hosting for attendees of our Silicon Prairie Social tech networking events.
This is the second Christmas party for the Silicon Prairie Social community; last year we gathered at Quigley’s in Naperville. This time, we’re back at Mullen’s Bar and Grill, host to our large events. As a thank-you, Mullen’s is throwing in some free pizzas for you; our thirsty guests.
We’re already feeling the excitement build over the last week as we’ve had the chance to talk to people in the tech community. You won’t want to miss this chance to get together with like-minded people; it’s a great opportunity to meet new customers, partners, and friends, and to bring clients to extend their own networks.
I am proud to announce that XNet will be hosting yet another Silicon Prairie Social this July 10! This time around it’s especially exciting. For the past few months, I’ve heard story upon story from past attendees; of the great connections they have made, the solutions they have found, and the new business they have picked up, all as a result of attending the Social.
The feedback has all been great, with everyone feeling welcome, and the networking they have achieved has surpassed their expectations. The energy is already gathering for the July event and we are expecting our largest crowd yet.
If you haven’t heard about the Silicon Prairie Social, then click here, you really don’t want to miss out on the best technical networking event in the suburbs.
It’s easy to dismiss a couple hours of downtime as a simple inconvenience. A time where your staff, frustrated that they can’t get their work done, takes to chatting around the water cooler or catching up on filing. In reality downtime has much greater consequences; each idle employee, every hour of technician time spent restoring your systems, and every moment your critical systems are down has a cost associated.
Have you ever taken the time to determine what this actually costs you?
We took a few typical company scenarios; a small service business (perhaps a consulting firm), a slightly larger company, and a mid-sized OEM. The numbers below are hypothetical but are a powerful illustration. Note that the cost for even two hours of downtime could far exceed the cost of hosting a full rack of servers at XNet for an entire year!
Percentage of Employees Unproductive During Downtime
50
70
80
Cost of Employee Downtime
$499.98
$7000.00
$40,000
Lost Sales Opportunities
Number Sales Per Year
50
1000
40000
Estimated Number Sales Lost Due To Outage
2
10
15
Cost of Lost Sales Opportunities
$40,000
$10,000
$18,750
Lost Customers & Damaged Reputation
Total Number Customers Last Year
50
1000
40,000
Average Revenue Per Customer
$20,000
$10,000
$1250
Number Lost Due to System Failure
1
8
20
Customer and Reputation Cost
$20,000
$80,000
$25,000
Total Cost of Network Downtime
$60,899
$97,500
$86,250
* Note: These are hypothetical scenarios designed to approximate the total cost of downtime to various sized organizations.
You can easily see from the above that 2 hours of downtime can cost more than you would have imagined.
Now, think of a situation where you can’t access your mail or database server, even for an hour. What happens in your office? Take yourself through the line items above and estimate your own cost using Sudora’s calculator.
In light of the above, “expenses” relating to securing your equipment and keeping it online 24/7/365 should be viewed as trivial. If you’ve thought before about hosting your equipment but have opted not to due to cost, don’t wait until the next power outage or server failure to revisit it.
How many power outages do you have each year?
How much time does it take to bring your critical services back online?
How many non-technical employees stood idle during this time?
Were the phones not ringing? How long was your Customer Service unable to serve your customers?
If the total cost of downtime is more than you’re comfortable paying, or if you don’t like your answers to the above questions, perhaps we should talk.
Certification Magazine just published an interview with Arthur Zards of XNet entitled “At XNet, It’s All About Attitude.” The article zeros in on the attitude XNet hires for and how certifications are often a by-product of an attitude of self-improvement and perpetual learning.
Last week, XNet was profiled in the Naperville Sun in the article “The big generator that could: XNet keeps businesses on the grid.” The article focuses on our boutique data center services and how our infrastructure keeps small and medium-sized businesses online in the event of a storm or power outage. In the article, XNet customer Mark Mayle of Equitas Group LLC talks well of his experiences with us over the last seven years. Thanks, Mark!
XNet’s Arthur Zards wrote this article that originally appeared in the January 21 TechLink section of The Business Ledger.
Surviving power outages without going broke
By: Arthur Zards
The most common IT disruption for small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) is by far a general power outage. From rolling brownouts in the West coast, to springtime Chicago storms; power outages are fairly common and are on the rise due to an ever increasing commercial demand for power, and limited resources to meet the growing demand.
When looking at your business continuity plan for a loss of power (you did do this, right?) You probably found out that there are not too many cost effective options. A typical UPS (usually your only option) will add only minutes of emergency back-up power. Plus, the more computers you stack on the UPS, the less time you have. With how heavily companies rely on technology, a power outage can grind business to an immediate halt. No power means no email, no servers, no website, and equally as important—no Internet access.
Are there any cost effective options for your critical computers? Luckily there’s one, you just may not know about it. The boutique datacenter.
For many non tech-oriented executives, “the datacenter” conjures up thoughts of gigantic warehouses filled with technicians in labs coats busily managing gigantic supercomputers—at a price tag far beyond your budget. This may have been true years ago, but due to the growing need for business continuity for the SMB market, there are now numerous smaller, boutique-style datacenters that cater specifically to the SMB.
What is a boutique datacenter exactly? It is a facility that has all the features of an enterprise datacenter; redundant power with a UPS, back-up generators, industrial-grade cooling (with back-up units), that’s networked across multiple locations with two or more backbone-level Internet connections. Translation: if any one piece fails, you stay connected. These facilities allow you access to your equipment 24×7 while keeping it secure, and best of all, the services are all tailored especially for the SMB.
Boutique datacenters serve small businesses who need to host as little as a single critical email server, where larger facilities require minimum space allotments that dwarf these customers’ needs. Plus they add special services to help the small IT department manage and grow their company network and systems, so their network can keep pace with their growing business. Best of all, they offer friendly, helpful services to non-technical executives who know they need their equipment secure, but might not know exactly how to accomplish it.
If this is you, and you are not too sure how to protect your systems from a power loss, contact a boutique datacenter that caters to your market. You’ll be surprised at the level of IT help they can offer you, at a price that is very attractive.
Bio:
Arthur Zards is President and co-founder of XNet, a Lisle-based boutique data center, the XNet Critical Computing Facility. Since 1992, XNet has been instrumental in growing Internet technologies in the Chicago area, and is now the largest independently owned Internet service provider in the Chicago area.
We decided to have a little fun in the wake of Steve Jobs’ iPhone update from yesterday, and created our own webclip icon for XNet.com. Now, you can have XNet on your iPhone: simply visit www.xnet.com, on your iPhone, click the “+” sign at the bottom of Safari, and save the webclip. The XNet iPhone icon will appear.
To do this for your own site, follow these three simple steps:
Create a new 57×57 PNG file with your logo or icon with the background color of your choice (transparent creates a black icon).
Name it “apple-touch-icon.png”
Upload it to the root folder of your web site (the same folder that holds your index.html file).
Create a webclip with your iPhone.
NOTE: At first, I searched the web for iPhone PSD templates with the aqua overlay and built the icon you see on this post. When I created a webclip on my iPhone, I noted that the phone had given it’s own treatment, resulting in a double-stamped coin effect. It really only takes the four steps I outline above. Apple builds the stylized icon for you!
Arthur Zards is the President and co-founder of XNet Information Systems. He is passionate about making the customer experience extraordinary. Arthur also enjoys carving Tiki Moai and jumping off of mountains.
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XNet is proud to announce the next Silicon Prairie Social, to be held on Tuesday, April 28th at Arrowhead Golf Club in Wheaton. We’re looking forward to gathering again with a couple hundred friends and associates from the technology community.
We decided to have a little fun in the wake of 
Arthur Zards is the President and co-founder of XNet Information Systems. He is passionate about making the customer experience extraordinary. Arthur also enjoys carving 