When I (Nan) first came on board with SalesBy5 I was provided a Blackberry. As any die-hard 'Berry fan knows, it is THE device for email. Here's what we didn't realize, without BES (Blackberry Enterprise Server), we were only utilizing a small portion of the power of the device! We got BES and things changed. Here's the interesting part - we don't have our own server and we don't have an IT department! Soon, you will be reading a press release about two companies from San Antonio that are making BES and Exchange hosting a reality for companies like ours, while freeing up time for IT. The Phone Store and Rackspace have teamed up to provide us this rockin' solution. Everything is hosted at Rackspace, who hasn't had their servers go down for SEVEN YEARS. How good is your uptime?
Here's what's cool about it. Having this set up allows for real-time syncing of your contacts, calendars, tasks, notes and email across all your computers and wireless devices - we use Blackberrys. Imagine this, you're out at a lunch and run into a friend that you want to have lunch with, but your assistant manages your calendar. Typically, you would be concerned about double booking since she may have made a change and you haven't synced your phone yet. With this, if she entered a new appointment you know about it in SECONDS! If you choose to add the lunch to your device, she will know about it that quickly too! Anything you add on any device will automatically sync to your other computers (PC or Mac). Did I mention that their virus and spam protection is incredible? It curbs about 99% of spam and rarely does it make a mistake.
The advantage to having The Phone Store and Rackspace do Exchange and BES hosting is that your IT person now has time to work on helping sell for your company. You know that your website is a marketing function, don't you? Why pay your IT guy incredible amounts of money to "change the oil and rotate the tires" when he could be working on your site, increasing visibility and making money for the company?
So how does this increase sales? Well, can you believe there are still people out there with a paper calendars that no one else on their team can see? There are people using Microsoft Exchange who must connect their smart phone or pda to sync. What's worse is there are business people with a phone and no e-mail “till they get back in town” or “get back to the office." Keep in mind that anyone in sales knows the if you are first, you usually win. So the first e-mail or the first returned call is yours to win or yours to lose. Our team comes home from a business trip or a day off and has no communications to catch up on.
The #1 cause of stress for business people is unfinished business at the end of the day. Now, we just gave you tips on how to:
- Lower your stress significantly
- Increase sales
- Work smarter, not harder
- Use technology to allow for speed and flexibility in your schedule
- Get out of 1990 and into 2008
Contact the following people to find out more and tell 'em SalesBy5 sent you!
Kevin Kemp @ The Phone Store - kevin AT thephonestoreinc.com
Xavier Rodriguez @ Rackspace - xavier.rodriguez AT rackspace.com
These guys are perfect examples of what Seth Godin spoke of in his post A shortage of digital coaches.
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