How Buzzwords and Jargon Get in the Way of Selling Compliance Archive
ExchangeDefender Compliance Archive is a secure, long term storage, recovery and eDiscovery system that ensures compliance with regulatory requirements established by IRS, HIPAA, SOX and SEC. ExchangeDefender Compliance Archive functionality is provided free – we only charge for the cost of storage. ExchangeDefender Compliance Archive uses the latest Microsoft Windows Server and Microsoft SQL Server technology to archive, index and replicate messages safely and securely. All data is further encrypted and backed up offsite to ensure ultimate resiliency in case of a disaster.
Makes perfect sense, right? The problem is, when you say something like this to many small business owners, it makes them feel very uncomfortable, even if meeting a compliance requirement is really important to them. And as we all should know, uncomfortable clients tend to keep their wallets closed.
The key to selling Compliance Archive to the small business is very simple: lose the buzzwords and jargon. Think about it this way: those small business owners are experts at some line of business that is NOT technology, and are choosing both to trust in and to pay for someone else’s knowledge and expertise in their chosen line of business, which IS technology.
Certainly, small business clients usually need some education, particularly during the sales process. That’s a part of your job as the technology expert, too. Rather than deliver your message in jargon and acronym-laden tech and compliance speak, though, the better way to win is to highlight the benefits of compliance email archiving beyond just actual compliance itself. It’s as if we are losing something by leaving our clients to “translate” for themselves, and it makes it harder to sell compliance archiving services.
It turns out that may be exactly what it is. We’ve learned from our partners that small business clients rarely care about all the regulatory compliance acronyms and regulation language or details – they just want the peace of mind of knowing they meet the requirements. Business decision makers also don’t like the idea of paying for “regulatory compliance,” but they love the idea of being able to find any email they sent or received over the past 10 years without having to buy extra servers, more software or deal with cumbersome MS Outlook. Even better, most everyone understands and is comfortable with a flat per-user storage fee (just $3.99 per month) that isn’t dependent on any measured unit of storage.
When you address the real problems and speak in a language of true benefits that people want, you’ll find there are far fewer objections over price and questions about features they don’t understand, and that deals close more quickly and more smoothly.
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If you’d like a lot more in-depth discussion about the cloud and how it affects you and your clients, visit Looks Cloudy http://www.lookscloudy.com where I blog daily about the adoption of the cloud in SMB, conduct live webcasts and podcasts with industry leaders, and more.
Kate Hunt
VP Community Development, ExchangeDefender
kate@ownwebnow.com
(877) 546-0316 x777