Suggestions to Uncover Hidden Marketing Assets and Generate Increased Revenue

Michael: Hey, Nick, Mike Senoff here. How are you doing?

Nick: Good.

Michael: What I want to do is I’m going to pick your brain, and the whole idea is I’m going to look for money in your business, okay?

Nick: Okay.

Michael: I know you’ve ordered a lot of Abraham stuff. Have you been going through some of that stuff? I mean, is it sticking in your head? Are you getting some ideas? Are you implementing anything? Tell me what you’ve been doing with all the tapes and the stuff you’ve gotten so far.

Nick: Yes, and I’ve been implementing some of the stuff for extra services.

Michael: The implementation from my experience, you can read it, and I’m like this, you can hear something and listen to it. Then, it’s out of your head a week later. I think most people who listen to stuff, the information’s gone because your brain can only hold so much, but the real key is taking a bunch of these ideas and implementing them, and then when you get a small incremental improvement with one of these ideas, when you start getting incremental improvements in five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten – then, you start growing geometrically. Do you see what I’m saying?

Nick: Right.

Michael: It’s a little bit of improvement on a lot of different things, but then there can be some places where you can get a lot of improvement on one thing that can make a dramatic difference, too.

Nick: Right.

Michael: Now, how would you rate your implementation? And, that’s real important. Let me just give you my personal experience. I can’t stand implementing, but you know what I’ve done to solve it, I just hire other people to do it. I’ve got a webmaster who handles all of the websites. I don’t have the patience for it. I’m more of an idea person, a creative person. So, when you go through these ideas, what is your system for implementation? Has it been lacking? Like most people, it is. Just tell me realistically, and that’s going to tell me your personality. You’re the owner of the company. How do you like to run the company? Are you weak on implementation? Where are you strong? Where are you weak? Because I want to know about Nick.

Nick: Yes, I’m strong in stuff that relates directly to my business in Internet web hosting. I know a couple of things I can do is a referral system, and I’ll send them the letters.

Michael: Are you saying you implemented some referral stuff?

Nick: Yes, and then send the letters and do the PS on the bottom, and it looks like it’s serious and what to make bold.

Michael: Now, are you talking about a referral system for your existing customers?

Nick: Yes.

Michael: Tell me the process what you do. Someone signs up for webhosting. What’s the referral process? How does that work?

Nick: I let them know we have a referral system that puts a banner on their site, and then if someone sees that on their site or if they know someone who needs webhosting, they tell them to go to their site and click the link to get to our site.

Michael: At what point do you ask them to do that?

Nick: I send it to everyone in the newsletter and also when they write in for support, they reply back thanking us for helping them, and we tell them the best way to thank us is with a link on their site, and we can give them credit for everyone that signs up through their site.

Michael: So, you’ve got a little affiliate thing going?

Nick: Right.

Michael: And, how is that working?

Nick: Pretty good.

Michael: Do you have any numbers on that?

Nick: Not sure.

Michael: Not really sure?

Nick: Yeah.

Michael: Okay. I want to get a general idea. I know you sent me some of the hosting company. Tell me – how would you describe your business? If you were at a cocktail party and someone says, “Hey, Nick, what do you do?” What are you going to say?

Nick: I host websites.

Michael: So, you’re in the website hosting business.

Nick: Right.

Michael: You know the industry more than me. How many people are hosting websites out there? Thousands?

Nick: Probably a hundred thousand or more.

Michael: A hundred thousand or more?

Nick: Probably.

Michael: A lot of small ones?

Nick: Right.

Michael: Okay, are you a small one, medium, large?

Nick: I’m medium.

Michael: Medium. How many customers do you have right now?

Nick: About 5,000.

Michael: You have 5,000 active customers that you’re hosting right now.

Nick: Right.

Michael: How many are you putting on every month?

Nick: Anywhere from about 75 to 150.

Michael: A month?

Nick: Yes, 160 a month.

Michael: 75 to 160 a month?

Nick: Right.

Michael: Okay, you’ve got 5,000. How would you break down that customer list? Can you give me an idea of what this database looks like?

Nick: Most of them are business sites, mostly people from the US.

Michael: Okay, mostly from the US. So, what percentage would you say is your US customers?

Nick: 75 percent is US.

Michael: All right 75 percent, and then they’re business sites. So, they’ve got hosting with you. What percentage would you say gets their domains through you?

Nick: Probably half.

Michael: Okay, fifty percent get their domain.

Nick: Right.

Michael: You say 75 of them are US, but what’s the service? The bottom tier service – it’s a basic monthly domain hosting service?

Nick: Right.

Michael: Would you say 90 percent of your customers or all of them, a hundred percent?

Nick: Yeah, usually there’s a domain with webhosting which is probably a hundred percent.

Michael: Now, I’m just looking at the shared hosting. Is most of it shared hosting?

Nick: Most of it, yes.

Michael: Most of it’s $7.95 a month.

Nick: Right.

Michael: And, have you figured out an idea of how long you keeping your customers for? Any idea on average?

Nick: Yes, sure.

Michael: You could figure it out, couldn’t you?

Nick: Yeah, I could try to look it up.

Michael: You don’t have to do it right now.

Nick: Fifty percent sign up for one year or more.

Michael: One year or more?

Nick: Right.

Michael: So, would you say most of those 5,000 are at the $7.95 a month, right?

Nick: Right.

Michael: And, you’re saying about 50 percent of them will stick around for a year?

Nick: Yeah, that’s probably 50-75.

Michael: And, the other 25 or 35 percent may stay two years.

Nick: No, they’ll cancel after the first year. Fifty to 75, one year or more, I’d say.

Michael: Okay, so, each one of those guys is worth about 95 bucks a year in hosting, okay?

Nick: Yes.

Michael: So, where’s the money in this business.

Nick: Through the shared hosting.

Michael: The shared hosting, $95.40 a year?

Nick: Right.

Michael: Is there set up fees or anything?

Nick: Usually they pay the year in advanced, the $95. If they do month to month, then I charge a little bit higher price.

Michael: What do you find most people are doing?

Nick: Most do the year.

Michael: Most do the year all at once?

Nick: Right.

Michael: Do you only offer a discount on a year?

Nick: One year or two years.

Michael: So, you have a two year plan, too?

Nick: Right.

Michael: What percentage take the two year plan? Any idea? A small percentage?

Nick: Ten percent or less.

Michael: Ten percent or less. You say about half of them get a domain through you?

Nick: Right.

Michael: And, do you make any money on the domain name?

Nick: Like five bucks.

Michael: Five bucks, that’s it?

Nick: Yeah.

Michael: So, let’s say we’re back at the cocktail party, okay? You’re in the hosting business. Someone says, “Well, I’m thinking about getting a website. What’s important about getting a website? Why should I get it from you guys rather than XYZ hosting here in my town?” What would you tell them? Just knowing the business, let’s start with that, and then we’ll get into some other stuff. What would you tell them? Any reasons why they should use you guys? What would you say to me?

Nick: We’re really good with tech support and customer service, and also we give you a lot of disk space and bandwith for what you pay for. It’s a good value.

Michael: Okay, let’s start with tech support. Is tech support important to have as a hosting company?

Nick: If you’re just getting started, it’s important to have that if anything’s not working right or if you need someone to call.

Michael: So, as you bring new people on, a lot of people are very clueless. You and I are experts at this stuff, somewhat, but most people have no idea what a domain name is. So, out of a hundred people who call you and get set-up, how many times are you going to hear back from them with problems?

Nick: Usually within the first month is when they call a lot, and you get them going.

Michael: And, you don’t hear from them again?

Nick: Rarely.

Michael: Okay, so usually the support is within the first month, getting their domain set-up and getting them into the control panel and all that, right?

Nick: Right.

Michael: So, tech support is important. Have you heard of other companies that will sign you up and they offer no tech support?

Nick: Some are email only support and response times are really long.

Michael: So, you can’t even call when you need help.

Nick: Right.

Michael: Do you find most people like to pick up the phone and call? Or do you offer a lot of support that’s mainly email and people choose not to call?

Nick: Yeah, probably a little bit over half is through email.

Michael: And, how many tech support people do you have in there?

Nick: Five including myself.

Michael: Is the phone usually ringing pretty good? Or sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t?

Nick: Yeah, really with the five is just for email, two to three or usually on the phone.

Michael: So, one of the benefits you would tell me is, “Look, a lot of other website companies out there, they’ll sell you those things, but they staff no one to handle any support over the phone. So, when you get set up and if you have a problem or you’re confused about something, you may wait days before you’re going to hear back from somebody. But, with us, we’ve got an 800-number on almost all of our pages. You could pick up the phone and call, and we’ll walk you through any solution you have starting from the minute after you sign up with us.”

Nick: Right.

Michael: That’s a nice advantage, isn’t it?

Nick: Yep.

Michael: Do you see who we illustrate that right up front? That’s probably very important. I would think if I’m new, I mean I remember when I first started with you guys, that’s important because I had no clue about this stuff. You said tech support’s important, and you talked about disk space. You give a lot of space. What you’re saying is you give a lot of value.

Nick: Disk space, bandwith, features and everything.

Michael: Let’s say I’m clueless. I don’t know what disk space is. Why is that important to me? And, how would you compare what you have with a lot of other sites out there?

Nick: We give you a lot of room to grow.

Michael: What is disk space on a website?

Nick: Basically you’re web files.

Michael: So, that’s when I’m building my website and I have pages. These pages take up space, right?

Nick: You get 2,500 megs.

Michael: 2,500 disk space?

Nick: Yeah.

Michael: Is that for shared hosting?

Nick: Right.

Michael: Most people, Nick, have no idea of what disk space is. I don’t. So, if you related it to something that I can understand, what would you tell me? That means Mike, if you’re building a website that you can have X amount of pages, ballpark.

Nick: That’s like 250 to 500 pages.

Michael: Okay, so give me a comparison of what you’ve seen out there in the industry. What are some of these other hosting companies offering for disk space? You’re giving 2,500 which is going to equal about 250 pages. What have you seen out there? What are they giving for the price?

Nick: The company gives really big ones. They give maybe 500, maybe even less than that sometimes.

Michael: So, we give you five times the amount of disk space, meaning if you went ahead and got hosting from another company for about the same price, you would only be able to get about 50 pages on your website, where if you order from us for the same price, we’ll give you 250. We give you enough space for you to grow, where other website companies may use this as a tactic to get you in on the front end where they know you’re going to run out of space, and then they bump you up to a higher price charge because you’re going to need more space.

Nick: Right.

Michael: Is that a tactic that a lot of these guys use?

Nick: Yes.

Michael: Okay, so other companies will play games with you and sign you up on a lowball price, but because most consumers aren’t aware of what disk space is, and they’re unaware on how to figure out what disk space means for building your website, they usually find very quickly that they’ve bought something even though for a little money, that isn’t going to fit their needs and the other website companies with no customer support, usually you have to email them, and you get upsold up to a much higher price package.

Nick: Right.

Michael: Is that fair? Does that sound like you’re offering a competitive advantage? And, do you see how we compared it to what others are doing and you’ve given them another compelling reason other than your phone support why they want to do business with you?

Nick: Yeah.

Michael: So, we just articulated some of your advantages into normal, everyday, down home language that the average Joe who knows nothing about websites could understand, right?

Nick: That’s right.

Michael: Let’s do it again for another advantage. We talked about phone support and we talked about disk space. What other advantages do you have that others don’t? You mentioned disk space and something else. Was it bandwith?

Nick: Right.

Michael: I don’t know what bandwith is Nick. What is bandwith?

Nick: Bandwith is when they view – if you have images and stuff on there and all kinds of bandwith, the amount of data transfer.

Michael: Disk space is going to allow me to hold my pages up there. Tell me what takes up a lot of bandwith, and then let’s see if we can articulate this into normal English.

Nick: The image is extremely larger than the text files.

Michael: So, if I have a lot of pictures on my website, every time someone clicks on it and they look at those pictures, those pictures are eating up bandwith, right?

Nick: Right.

Michael: What else causes a lot of bandwith? Audio files?

Nick: Yes, any kind of audio or video.

Michael: So, if I’m playing video on my website or if I’m playing audio, that eats up a lot of bandwith, right?

Nick: Right.

Michael: Your shared hosting plan – how much bandwith am I going to get with my $7.95 a month website.

Nick: 65 gig.

Michael: 65 gig. From your experience, most people who have websites, how much bandwith are they using? Is there an average? Most of these sites are pretty simple sites, they’re nothing like mine, right?

Nick: Right.

Michael: They’re mainly tech sites with a couple of images.

Nick: Right.

Michael: How much bandwith are they going to eat up? Generally, how much are they going to use with one of their sites, and tell me again how much you’re offering on this plan?

Nick: Most sites probably use around 15 gig and we offer 65 gigs.

Michael: All right, most people are using 15 gig and you offer 65 gig.

Nick: Right.

Michael: How would you give me a comparison? What do you see other companies offering out there fro the same value that you’re offering?

Nick: They usually do about ten gigs.

Michael: Ten gigs, you’re giving five times the amount of bandwith, meaning where other companies only offer you ten gig of bandwith, you’re giving me six times the amount for the same money. So, you give my website a chance to grow six times longer than most other website hosts.

Nick: Right.

Michael: That sounds good. Do other website companies play the same game, lowball bandwith usage where you run out of bandwith and instead your upsold to something higher?

Nick: Right.

Michael: Do you guys play those games?

Nick: We do have one higher plan, but 65 gigs is quite a bit and appropriate for most sites.

Michael: So, Advanced Network Hosting doesn’t play games when it comes to hosting websites. We don’t offer lowball bandwith and disk space where we get you in the front end and then as soon as you realize you need more space, you’re not upsold to a higher plan. We don’t play games with our customers. So, right from the front, you’re going to have everything you need to run an average website. Enough disk space for over 200 pages, and enough bandwith – let’s put this into something that people can understand. How many pictures would you say you could host on your site for a month without going over your bandwith? Because people can relate to pictures on a website. If we quantified into something they can relate, it’s an easy illustration.

Nick: Right, if you had pictures at 100k on there, it could be viewed 650,000 times.

Michael: A lot of people have digital cameras, right?

Nick: Right.

Michael: Let’s say you go develop picture of your family. How big would you say the image would be?

Nick: About 100k.

Michael: Okay, so you have 100k. So, how would it work? Would it be you get 650,000 views of one picture?

Nick: Yeah, that’s 650,000 of those views.

Michael: Okay, so what we could say is you put a picture of your family up on your website, you could show that picture to 650,000 different people every month, and you’d never need to grow any more than that.

Nick: Right.

Michael: Does that sound like something that we could articulate? Do you see how that’s easy to explain in normal people terms? This is really, really, really important, okay? Because what I’m trying to craft for you – it has to be done. This is called your Unique Selling Proposition. I’m sure you’ve heard of it in some of the materials. You have got to be able to articulate in a language that people can understand why you’re different, what separates you from every website hosting company.

Nick: Right.

Michael: And 99.9 percent of the people out there, they don’t know what disk space is, they don’t know what megabyte is. They don’t know any of that stuff. Am I right?

Nick: Right.

Michael: I’m asking you, too. You hear “meg” and I know what it is, but for me to really understand what it is, I’ve got to put it into an explanation that can show me what it’s going to do for me, okay?

Nick: Yeah.

Michael: So, we’ve already articulated three important things. We articulated that most other companies don’t give you phone support. They don’t give you the time of the day. The only way you can communicate with most of them is through email, and sometimes you won’t hear back from them for ten days. Most of the time, you’re going to need help getting your website set up within the first two weeks, and that’s why we have an 800-number where you can call anytime with normal business hours and we can set you up. Usually when you call, you’ll get that help starting immediately, okay?

Number two, we offer six times the amount of disk space than most other companies do for the same price. What that means for you is if you’re starting a website, you would have enough disk space to put over 250 pages of content on your website. Would that be enough for you to grow, sir? Do you know what I’m saying?

The other thing we offer, sir, is we offer 650 megabytes of bandwith. Now, what that means for you is most other companies offer five times less, but for the same money, we’re giving you five times more and what that means for you as an example, if you wanted to post a picture of your family and share it with the world, you would be able to have 650,000 people look at that picture each month. Do you think you’re going to get 650,000 people to look at your website every month?

They maybe say no. Then that means you’d have plenty of space and lots of space to grow. Most other companies, sir, try and get you in on the low amounts of disk space and low amounts of bandwith and they play games with you. So, by the time you’ve got your website, you’ve already committed to them with URL and you’ve already paid up front. You soon realize that you need more disk space and more megabyte of bandwith, and they usually upsell you to a much more expensive hosting program.

So, they mislead you up on the front end and they don’t really give you enough of these things that you need to operate your website. Does that make sense?

Nick: Yeah.

Michael: We don’t do that. We don’t play games with you. We give you everything you need to grow for a long period of time, and we give you about five times the value for the same price. Now, we’ve got all this laid down on to tape. We can have it transcribed, Nick, and we can have scripts for your people. This can all be scripted out, okay?

Nick: Yeah.

Michael: All right. I did a call. I did it real quick. Now, I’m not going to play it for you, but right before I called you, I talked to – who is it? Randy?

Nick: Okay, yeah.

Michael: Okay. I called Randy and he didn’t know who I was, and I acted like I just came across your website, and I can play it for you later. And, I acted like I just came across your website and I said I was interested in website hosting, and I probably acted like the average moron who knows nothing about website hosting, and although he was somewhat helpful and obliging, most of your guys, I’m sure they’re just winging it when people call, right?

Nick: Yeah.

Michael: They don’t have scripts. You don’t have any kind of policy of what these people should say, right?

Nick: Right.

Michael: See, when people are calling, they’re confused. They want to be sold. They want direction. They want to know what to do. Randy, I said, “I have an idea for a domain. I don’t know much about it.” And, I said, “I’ve got this idea for a domain called copysafe.com.” He goes, “I’ll search it and see if it’s taken.” So, he searched it and he said, “Well, that’s taken for a year.” I go, “Okay.” I just kind of sat there. He let me get off the phone. He didn’t offer me anything. He didn’t go near the extra mile to say, “Well, sir, why don’t we try to come up with another name that would work for you.”

Because if you’ve got a guy calling up and they’re interested in hosting services, you know they’re clueless, okay? They’re looking for direction. They’re looking for help, but what I’m saying is we could script out some of these things for your people, your customer support - you, Randy, whoever is in there handling these calls – you should have, it’s called a sales script book.

This is one of the most valuable things you could ever have, and as we script it out, it’s going to be great for your people because they don’t have to think. They don’t have to wing it. They can read scripts. So, you are getting common questions from your customers, right?

Nick: Right.

Michael: Okay, and you’re handing these calls, aren’t you everyday?

Nick: Yeah.

Michael: Let’s talk about some of the most common questions you’re getting when someone calls. What are you finding that are some of the most common questions? People call. What are you generally hearing over and over again? You know 90 percent of the people have the same questions, right?

Nick: For sales or for tech support.

Michael: Let’s say sales. Let’s say getting the new customers. Tech support – that’s keeping a customer. Let’s talk about acquiring that customer because if I just show you how to get 50 percent more customers or not lose as many customers are you’re getting, I can double your sales. If I just show you how to double the amount of the leads coming in and show you how to keep 100 percent more than you’re losing, I can double your company.

Nick: Great.

Michael: What are the main questions you’re getting from people calling interested in hosting?

Nick: Well, it’s kind of probably like, “why us?” because there’s so many other companies out there that do hosting.

Michael: And, they say, “Why you?”

Nick: Because we’re better than everybody else.

Michael: Did we come up with three or four answers already?

Nick: Yep.

Michael: Okay, you see, that’s perfect because that’s probably the number one question, “Why you?” “Why are you different they want to know?” “What’s your competitive advantage?” “What is your Unique Selling Proposition?” “What makes you unique?” Now, I’m not saying the things we talked about are the most important thing, but I’ve given you three or four reasons that you can read off to these people in a script that I’m telling you will sell these guys, okay?

We’ve articulated all that. So, that can be in your script book. So, once we script it out and we have exactly what your sales people can say when they encounter that question, they go to page number one and they read it, and soon they won’t be reading it, they’ll have it memorized those main reasons.

Do you see how that can help?

Nick: Yep.

Michael: What’s another main question they have just from your experience? Can you think of anything else?

Nick: Questions on how to get started. They want to know how easy it will be or how hard.

Michael: So, they’re afraid that it’s going to be confusing, right?

Nick: Right.

Michael: I’m not going to ask how you handle it, but when they say something like that, they’re pretty much sold. Would you agree?

Nick: Right.

Michael: So, the main thing is they want to know why you. You have a 30 day money back guarantee, right?

Nick: Right.

Michael: Do you tell the people that while you’re talking to them? Is that ever brought up?

Nick: They ask if you have some kind of guarantee or anything, I’ll tell them.

Michael: You’ll bring it up, okay. So, can you think of any other most common questions besides, “Why you?” “Why not everyone else?” Anything else you can think of? What are people asking when they’re calling up?

Nick: They ask about the uptime. People like to have 99.9 percent up time.

Michael: Good, I’m glad you brought it up. Let’s talk about uptime. What does uptime mean, Nick?

Nick: It’s the amount of time the site is available.

Michael: Meaning my site doesn’t go down?

Nick: Right.

Michael: And, how is your uptime? Do you have any stats on that? Are you up 99-point?

Nick: Up 99.9.

Michael: So, you can say over the last four years, you’ve been up 99.9 percent of the time.

Nick: Right.

Michael: And, what we can do is we can take that percentage and quantify it. So, let’s say out of an entire month, your downtime maybe three minutes.

Nick: Right.

Michael: Okay, so that’s something that everyone can understand. Let’s get into why is your uptime so good. Tell me why.

Nick: We use high quality equipment.

Michael: So, you have all your equipment in house?

Nick: We have it one of the top data centers in Chicago.

Michael: So, all of your equipment is one of the top data centers in Chicago.

Nick: Yes. We have server administrators that we have working here are really good, and they keep everything running smoothly, and as fast a speed as possible.

Michael: So, you’re data center in Chicago, how many sites are they hosting?

Nick: The Level Three data center is probably one of the largest in this country.

Michael: What’s it called?

Nick: Level Three.

Michael: Level Three?

Nick: Right.

Michael: That’s the name of the company?

Nick: Yes.

Michael: Okay, so what does a center do? Do they host all the servers?

Nick: Yeah.

Michael: They’re all in there?

Nick: Yep.

Michael: How many do you think they have in there?

Nick: Thousands.

Michael: You have an alliance with one of the largest data centers in the entire world, right?

Nick: Right.

Michael: They’re called Level Three. They’re local. You’re in Chicago, right?

Nick: Yeah, they have data centers all over the country, though.

Michael: How far are you from the data center?

Nick: Pretty close.

Michael: So, you’re alliance is with a data center, one of the largest in the world. They have thousands of centers all over the country. They have thousands of computers in there. Is it a dust proof environment and all that?

Nick: Yeah.

Michael: Static proof environment. It’s like going into NASA, right?

Nick: Right. They have air conditioning, everything.

Michael: Have you been in there?

Nick: Yes.

Michael: So, because you’re located in Chicago, you’re in direct relationship with your data center. So, you’re hosting all your stuff locally, you could say, right? Tell me what are most of these small hosting companies doing?

Nick: Most of them base the service from somewhere else, or if they’re really small then they lease the infrastructure.

Michael: And, they’re leasing it. Now, are you leasing it too?

Nick: No, I own all the equipment.

Michael: You own all the equipment, not in the data center though, right?

Nick: The equipment that I put in the data center is mine. I rent that section of the data center for my stuff. It provides the redundant power and high speed Internet connections. They’re downtown Chicago sits right on the Internet backbone.

Michael: What does that mean “Right on the Internet backbone”?

Nick: You’re able to get to the site faster. A lot of the other places, they’ll be out in the suburbs or somewhere where they bring other Internet lines out to get to them.

Michael: All right. So, tell me what does that mean for me as a customer by you being on the back bone?

Nick: Your site faster.

Michael: My site is going to load faster?

Nick: Yeah.

Michael: So, because of your relationship with the data center, because it’s right in downtown Chicago, because it’s right on the Internet backbone, describe that in normal language to someone. What does being on the Internet backbone mean?

Nick: If you’re connecting from your home, there’s a number of different hubs it goes through, and then if you’re on the Internet backbone, it saves you a couple hops there.

Michael: So, you’re right on the main highway?

Nick: Right.

Michael: So, most other webhosting companies, if they’re leasing their space from smaller data centers, it’s like they’re out in the suburbs and if you want to get online, you would have to go through three to four neighborhoods before you get on the highway. So, when you’re leasing space from us because we’re directly in downtown Chicago, our Internet servers are right on the highway. So, when someone wants to go to your site, they don’t have to go through neighborhoods to wait for their page to load. They can just jump right onto the highway instantly. Is your page loading an important issue for when someone visits a website?

Nick: If it doesn’t load right away, they’ll close and go to the next site.

Michael: Do you have any stats on that, Nick? Percentage of websites that the pages load slow and they’re losing customers?

Nick: It’s probably like 75 percent of the people, if the page takes more than ten seconds or so for the home page to come up, they’ll just go to another site.

Michael: Is it common with a lower quality Internet host provider who’s maybe not on the backbone, is it common for their pages to take ten seconds? Could that be pretty common out there?

Nick: It takes longer, yeah.

Michael: Sometimes longer than ten seconds?

Nick: Longer, I don’t know exact statistics.

Michael: All right. Can you give me an estimate how much faster your page will load being on the backbone compared to another hosting company who is not right on the backbone? Could your page load twice as fast? Would that be fair?

Nick: I don’t know. It’s hard to say.

Michael: Okay. This is so key. This is such a selling point that you wouldn’t even believe it. Okay? What this means is if I’m you and I’m talking to you, I’m saying, “Look, Nick, you can get hosting from other smaller companies where all their equipment is not on the backbone on the Internet and it’s out in little neighborhoods with smaller companies, or you can get hosting with us. Now, because these hosting services don’t own their own equipment, and aren’t in a facility that’s properly financed and staffed and kept sterile, what that means is when someone wants to go to your website, whatever product or service you’re selling, in most cases, it’s going to take longer for your website page to load because the connection has to go through little neighborhood streets before it gets on the main highway.”

We can articulate this and write this out where it’s easier to understand, “but when you order from us because of our facility and because we have a direct relationship with the data center, and because we host all of our own equipment in the data center, because I’m only a couple minutes from the data center, and it’s in a clean, sterile environment, and it’s one of the largest data centers in the world, when you get a website from us, our page pops up almost instantly.”

“Now, if you’re trying to sell a product on your webpage, or a service, and you can get people to your webpage, but it’s taking more than ten seconds for your page to load, what do you think is going to happen to your customers?”

Nick: They’re going to go somewhere else.

Michael: They’re going to go somewhere else. Do you think that can lose you business?

Nick: Yeah.

Michael: Absolutely. So, do you see how critical it is for your page to pop-up really fast?

Nick: Yep.

Michael: Let me ask you a question, Nick, just play along with me, okay. You’re selling widgets on your webpage, right?

Nick: Yeah.

Michael: How much do you sell your widgets for?

Nick: 7.95.

Michael: Okay, $7.95, and let’s say you sell 100 widgets a month. That’s $795, right?

Nick: Yes.

Michael: Now, because your page loads slower, do you know you’re lose 75 percent of those sales because they won’t even have a chance to buy your widgets? Do you hear what I’m saying? So, when you have a particular customer, when you’re finding out what they’re doing, you can articulate this so clearly. We’ve got now four different compelling reasons why they should have Internet service with you, that I guarantee you that not one in a thousand people are articulating to their customers.

Nick: Right.

Michael: Is this good stuff?

Nick: Yep.

Michael: We can script all this out so you can have it in front of your people.

Nick: Okay.

Michael: So, this is the USP, and I’ll work on this for you, okay. Let me ask you, you’ve got five people in there, right?

Nick: Yes.

Michael: You’ve got you and four other people. So, what’s the environment like. Where are you? Are you in an office or what?

Nick: Office, yes.

Michael: And, where are all the people, in cubicles, or just different offices, or what?

Nick: A couple different rooms.

Michael: So, what is their job? You’ve got Randy. What are these customer service techs? How would you describe them? Are these friends? Are they family? Are the employees? What’s the environment there?

Nick: Randy I’ve know for long before we worked here. The other guys came on to work here.

Michael: So, they’re employees, right?

Nick: Yes.

Michael: And, who’s the boss over there, you?

Nick: Yes.

Michael: You’re the boss. When a guy comes in on a shift, what are the hours?

Nick: Me and Randy are here nine to six everyday.

Michael: All right. What is Randy’s job and what are these other guys’ jobs? What are they doing all day?

Nick: Answering calls, doing the phone, and also email.

Michael: So, they’re doing nothing but people who call in and people who proactively email for customer support, right?

Nick: Right.

Michael: Okay, and that’s all they’re doing. When you’re not on the phone, how much downtime, realistically do you have where you’re just sitting there twiddling your thumbs or drinking water or whatever? Are you working these guys’ ass off? Are they always working? Or are they sitting around a lot?

Nick: They work pretty hard.

Michael: So, they’re keeping pretty busy?

Nick: Yeah.

Michael: So, all your service is all on incoming stuff, right?

Nick: Yes.

Michael: Okay. Now, this is real important. You’ve got 5,000 existing customers, and I’m one of them, and I know I don’t see too many emails from you. Bring me the process. Someone, they find out about you through some kind of advertising. You sign them up. They’re probably signed up for a year. You take care of the customer support. You’re only waiting for those incoming calls. Really, there’s no reason to contact them, right?

Nick: Right.

Michael: And, you don’t contact them, do you?

Nick: Occasionally, I send out a newsletter that says what’s going on.

Michael: You know where all the money is in this business? It’s right in those 5,000 people. If someone wants to grow, for instance, like myself, I started with one website with you and I probably have twelve of them with you, but what other products and services does someone who hosts a website, and since you said most of yours are business websites, right?

Nick: Right.

Michael: What other kind of things can you provide for these guys as they grow? More space?

Nick: Yes, a couple of people park names like if there’s a dot-net, or if some other domain name that goes to the same home page.

Michael: So, if they have a dot-com, another way for people to find your site is to get dot-net, dot-org and the other ones, right?

Nick: Right.

Michael: And, you’re only making five bucks on each one.

Nick: For the domain registry I make about five bucks, and then to set it up I charge $20 to go to the same home page.

Michael: Give me a hypothetical with my hardtofindseminars.com. For $25, what are you going to do for me?

Nick: You get hardtofindseminars.net to go to that same home page.

Michael: And, it takes them to dot-com.

Nick: Yeah, it works. You want it to go that same home page.

Michael: Okay, so how much is each name going to cost me?

Nick: The names are $14.95, and I get them for like eight or ten dollars.

Michael: So, for a hundred bucks, I can get dot-net, dot-org, dot-biz, dot-whatever and if anyone ever searches on those, it’s going to take them all directly to my site.

Nick: Right.

Michael: That could be a little upsell, okay. You don’t offer that to people right when they order, do you?

Nick: No.

Michael: You don’t offer any kind of upsell once you get off the phone with them. All you’re offering them is that $7.95 a month, right?

Nick: Yes.

Michael: You know, if you offered something like that or if you came up with a simple package to offer these people, something that they’re going to need that they don’t realize that they’re going to need that’s going to benefit them in the future, that you could sell fifty percent of them. Is that something you’d be willing to implement if we could come up with some upsells when people call on the phone and they’re ordering?

Nick: Yes.

Michael: Let’s explore these, okay? So, that’s one potential upsell, and that’s a real benefit to the customer because if it’s a business who wants a website with you and you’ve just shown them a way that they can capture more traffic by getting an exclusive on their name, meaning one thing they don’t want to do is once their business grows and get successful, you don’t want people squatting on your name, meaning you don’t want people stealing your name but getting a different extension. Do you see what I’m saying?

Nick: Right.

Michael: And, you can say, one important and very sophisticated and easy technique to keep this from ever happening, what we recommend is to buy all of your endings, meaning to buy hardtofindseminars.net, .org, .biz, .gov, whatever – and we have a package that can keep anyone from squatting on your name where you have a monopoly on your name. You see?

So, you can say, “For $125” or whatever we come up with, okay, Nick? How many different extensions are there? Dot-org, dot-net, dot-give, dot-biz.

Nick: Dot-us.

Michael: Let’s say there’s five of them, right?

Nick: Yeah.

Michael: To get them it would be $14.95.

Nick: Yes.

Michael: Okay, $14.95, and that’s a year, right? So, that’s $74.75 and you’re going to charge how much to it?

Nick: $19.95.

Michael: Let’s just say $25. So, plus $25, so you’re going to make $25 and you make five bucks on each one, right? That’s $25. So, that one upsell is $50. If you had 30 percent of those people say yes to that, you’ve just profited 50 bucks, right? But, not only did you profit 50 bucks one time, if you get them to stay with you the next year, they’re going to usually keep that going. Do you see what I’m saying?

Nick: Right.

Michael: And, that’s a pretty damn compelling reason. People don’t think about that when they’re starting their businesses, but if we wrote out a script and made them that offer, you’ve got an upsell that makes you fifty bucks every year, almost as much as what you’re making the entire year on your hosting. Do you see how that could bring in some more cash for you? And, that’s all upfront money. Do you realize that?

Nick: Right.

Michael: That’s upfront cash. When you’re doing your month to month, that brings you to six months worth of cash all upfront, and you could use that cash to grow the business. So, implementing upsells in your business, I think is really, really important and I think we can easily get you a lot of money doing that if you’re willing to do this stuff.

Now, all these ideas are great, right, but you’ve got to be willing to delegate this stuff, and are you willing to put a plan together to implement this stuff and say, “Look, guys I want to grow this business, and you’re either with me or you’re not, and we’re going to do something different here.” Are you willing to do that?

Nick: Yes.

Michael: Now, let’s talk about when someone signs up with you, and you’re entering them all into a database, what information do you have on them? All their information, right?

Nick: Right.

Michael: Now, you were going to do in email out. Do you have that in an autoresponder now? I mean, can you get all 5,000 of your customers in autoresponder?

Nick: Yes.

Michael: What else is someone who hosts services with you going to need as they grow? What else can we sell them?

Nick: Search engine submission.

Michael: Okay, is that something you offer?

Nick: No.

Michael: You do not. Are you willing to do it?

Nick: Yes.

Michael: Is it time consuming for you?

Nick: It takes a little bit of time.

Michael: Okay. That’s excellent, search engine submission. So, obviously, when somebody has a website, they’ve got to get it all set it up first, and then the logical question is, how do I get people to my site? And, it’s done through the search engines. Everyone knows what a search engine is but before any of the search engines recognize your website, you need to submit it to all the websites, right?

Nick: Right.

Michael: This is something that could be scripted out as well, and it could be done at the same time you get them set up or we could do that for a call back meaning does your staff have enough time to make direct calls, let’s say two weeks after someone signs on with you?

Let’s say I sign up with you. I’ve got my website. We’ve got it up and running. Two weeks after someone signs on with you, you can make sure their site is up. You can go look at it, and you can email them or call them, you could have it in an autoresponder when email automatically goes up that says, “This is Nick from Advanced Hosting. It’s been two weeks since you signed up with us, and I’ve checked your website. Everything looks good. Usually what most people ask is once they signed up with us they want to know how do I get traffic to our site? What you need to do is you need to do search engine submission meaning we need to let all the search engines like Google and Yahoo and Alta Vista and MSN, all the big search engines know that you’re out there, and the way that you do that, everybody website if they want to be on the search engines, they have to submit their information to these search engines. Now, we have all of your information right here in our database, and what we would like to know is would you like to be submitted to these search engines? We have a special for our existing customers. Normally, you would pay”-

Now, what do most companies charge for search engine submission?

Nick: I’m not sure.

Michael: Look, most people have no clue about websites. I mean I would think a hundred bucks is fair, wouldn’t you?

Nick: Yes.

Michael: And, how much profit’s in it? You know it doesn’t cost you anything to do it, does it?

Nick: A little bit of time.

Michael: A little bit of time.

Nick: And, that’s it.

Michael: You can do an upsell of a hundred bucks for search engine submission, that’s almost pure profit, Nick. So, we’ve taken a measly $75 sale, we’ve upsold and not everyone, but if you get 30 or 40 percent. Let’s be so conservative. You’ve got 5,000 customers right now. This has been over the years. You said you did about a hundred every month. Let’s say 120 times twelve. That’s 1400 new customers a month. Okay?

Nick: Yeah.

Michael: Let’s do some numbers. Let’s say you keep doing what you’re doing now. You’ve got 1,440 customers. Let’s multiply that by your average customer with your hosting is worth about $95.40, okay. You’ve got $137,376. That’s what you’re doing right now. $137,376, and that was for 1,440 customers a year.

Let’s say we implemented the first upsell where you want a monopoly on your domain name, and let’s just say only ten percent said yes. That’s very conservative, okay?

Nick: Yes.

Michael: 1,440 times .10 percent, that’s 144 customers a year said yes, okay, and we decided you could make yourself about $50 on each one, profit. So, there’s another $7,200 in profits right there, just with that one upsell script, okay? Then, let’s say on this idea that we just talked about which was the search engine optimization. I’m telling you, I think out of those 1,440, realistically you could get at least twenty percent. That’s 288 customers a year at about 100 bucks a pop. That’s $28,800. So, $28,800 plus $7,200 – there’s another $36,000 in profits right there.

Now, I’m saying profits because this is all profit. You’ve got a little time involved, but do you realize that these are profits that came without any form of advertising?

Nick: Right.

Michael: These profits came out of your existing customers. That’s 36 grand right there, and that’s just only two little upsells, okay? That’s when you take the order right there and then a two week call later one. Let’s continue on. You’ve got search engine optimization, what else will a new website owner need over time that you can think of? What are some of the other services the other guys are doing? Easy, profitable stuff, easy upsells. Anything you can think of?

Nick: Spam filtering.

Michael: Is that something you offer normally, through your site?

Nick: It’s some I offer normally, and then there’s another one you can do with the DNS entry.

Michael: What’s the DNS entry? Why does someone need that?

Nick: One thing now is spammer’s will send out information saying it’s from something at your domain, but if you have that DNS entry, you can block that so no one would be able to send email that looks like it’s coming from your domain.

Michael: Does that happen a lot?

Nick: Yeah, it’s pretty common now.

Michael: What could happen to that person who owns that website?

Nick: It’s bad for their business. Spammers do it just because it’s a very vulnerable program, but they send it to people so that it looks like it’s coming from a trusted party to an extent.

Michael: Can someone lose their hosting?

Nick: Yes, it’s possible.

Michael: They can get irate customers.

Nick: Right.

Michael: Okay. So, you can explain to someone who’s buying your services, let’s say they’re set up and two weeks down the road they’re interested in doing some search engine stuff. So, they submit to all the search engines. So, maybe two weeks down the road, and email can come out and say, “Did you know that spammers could hijack your URL? Meaning they could send out millions and millions of emails using your domain name as a person sending it out. This is a very common problem that can not only cause your business a lot of ill well from millions of people, but it can also in some cases, take down your hosting. We offer another service” – and what do you call that service? Nick, you could give that a name. You can call it Operation Lockout if you want to.

So, we have another service called Operation Lockout with what it does is we go in and register your domain name, or whatever you do, and we keep this from happening so no spammers can hijack your URLs to send out. You know, that’s just another idea for an upsell. Do you see what I’m saying?

You can come up with probably fifteen or twenty of them if you do some thinking, right?

Nick: Yes.

Michael: Do you see what I’m getting at how easy this is if you implement it? All right, let’s do this, let’s put it on pause for right now. We covered a lot of things. We covered your Unique Selling Proposition. We’ve got four or five articulate reasons why and all get these transcribed for you, okay, because I’m going to come up with a little sales script book for you. So, I’m going to put these reasons why someone should buy from you.

First, let’s get that, and on our next call what we’re going to do is we’re going to implement these. So, when you guys answer the phone, you’ve got to have these compelling reasons why consistent through all your communications with your customers, okay?

It really should be on your website, but it’s not absolutely necessary. If they’re calling in or emailing, you want to get these reasons why they should do business with you right away. And, it may be when Randy answers the phone, you have a script where he says, “Advanced Network Hosting where most other websites try to get you in on low traffic and low megaspace, we give you five times the space, how may I help you?”

Nick: Right.

Michael: If you call like Craig in Auto Parts, I don’t know if they’re out there, you can see some of these people answer their phones consistently the same way because they want to telegraph that message, that reason why.

Now, what I’d like you to do, and this is really important in articulating the reason why someone should do business with you, you have ideas as the owner of the business, but do you know who really has the ideas? It’s your customers. I want you to send me a random list of ten or fifteen of your customers, and I want you to send me their name and their telephone number. Then, I’m going to call them and I’m going to interview them. I’m not going to do an intensive interview, but I’m going to call them with your permission. I’m going to say I’m with Advanced Network Hosting and we’re following up, and I’m going to ask them some questions, and I’m going to find out what’s important to them about website hosting, and we’re going to get some ideas right from your buyers.

Nick: All right.

Michael: Does that sound good?

Nick: Yes, just pick them out at random?

Michael: Why don’t you give me some random ones from this month, recent ones? All right?

Nick: Yep.

Michael: And, then I’m going to do some calls, and then we’re going to learn something from your customers because that’s where the gold is. They’re going to tell you exactly what you need to be offering.

Nick: Right.

Michael: Okay, buddy, has this been helpful?

Nick: Yep.

Michael: Let me get this thing edited, and I’ll get it to you to listen to, and give me a couple of weeks. I’ll put together a script and we’ll continue on.

Nick: Okay.

Michael: Okay, bye.

Hi, this is Michael Senoff with HardtoFindSeminars.com. I hope this has been helpful and has given you some ideas. You may want to take the transcripts and print them out, use some of the text to modify some of the scripts for your own purpose, and if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to call. Make sure you also listen to the follow-up call when I’m actually calling on the customers trying to identify what’s important to them, and uncovering unique selling propositions from their end to see if we can match it from the information we’ve gotten from the website hosting business owner Nick. Enjoy!