You’ve already qualified your prospect as a small- to medium-sized business that likely already knows downtime and data loss is something to worry about. They are concerned; it’s discussed in the news, it’s discussed among their peers. You’ve asked enough discovery questions to confirm their fears—downtime could absolutely crush their profits and likely put them out of business. So, now it’s time to explain that to them, offer your sales presentation, and show them the business continuity solution they absolutely need to purchase.
Here are three points you should include when making that business continuity sales presentation.
1. “Imagine one business day without your computer systems.”
If you’ve qualified your prospect correctly, this question should sting to even consider. If it doesn’t, you may not have the right lead in your sales funnel. The best backup and disaster recovery (BDR) prospects are organizations that rely on computer systems in their daily operations in one way or another; to lose that data would amount to a loss of productivity and profits.
Typical answers to this question would likely include the following components:
- They would be unable to do any business at all;
- Business would continue, but at a greatly reduced rate, and/or
- They would be financially liable to their clients or in violation of regulatory standards over the course of that downtime, and would have to pay some form of monetary penalty.
These near-term consequences of downtime can hurt, but it’s important that the prospect understands the long-term consequences of such an event. After all, an acute financial hit to business can be crippling, but it does not always seem insurmountable to every prospect.
2. Explain the chances of survival.
As recently featured on the Continuum blog, 40 percent of businesses go under immediately after a disaster, 60 percent fail within six months, and a whopping 90 percent of organizations without a BDR solution are out of business within two years. No matter how confident a person is in their business, those are statistics that anyone who is already concerned about downtime will not be able to ignore. In many cases, you may not always have to present the need for BDR—you need to make the point that businesses need to be able to recover as fast as possible after a disaster in order to survive, and with your solution, they have the best chance of survival.
3. Do the math.
In a perfect world where all computer systems were infallible and natural disasters didn’t happen, there wouldn’t be a need for BDR. However, the fact is that for your prospects, the cost of your business continuity solution is far better than the risks and costs associated with downtime. Remember that in essence you're selling peace of mind by way of technology, and it is illustrated beautifully by calculating the cost of downtime.
For each hour of downtime, add together
- The revenue they’d lose each hour they were offline
- The salary cost per employee for lost productivity
- The costs associated with physically recovering from a natural disaster, and
- Any intangible factors, such as damage to brand or reputation associated with downtime.
Once that number is summed, extrapolate that figure over a day, a week, or more, and it should become clear why a powerful and fast business continuity solution is a vital expense that your prospect’s business requires.
Need help jazzing up your BDR sales deck? Check out these useful charts, available for download:
Next Steps: A Sales Kit for You
Are you looking to boost your BDR sales efforts? Continuum's new Business Continuity Sales Success Kit can help you close more deals and win more clients. Designed to be used throughout your sales funnel, from lead generation to presentation to contract signing, this kit provides ample resources that can be completely customized to best suit your business, as well as actionable, informative and educational content—such as scripts, talk tracks and more—to train new sales team members about the unique benefits and sales propositions inherent to backup and disaster recovery platforms. Download the Business Continuity Sales Success Kit here!
Joseph Tavano is senior content marketing manager at Continuum. Read more Continuum blogs here.