What are the most common sales questions that you get asked by prospective clients.

Where are your servers based seems to be a common one.

If you get asked the same questions repeatedly, doesn't that suggest you should add the information on your website? And if it's already on your website... the information should be added somewhere prominent. :)

Where are your servers based as someone else has said.
But 99.99% of them are people wanting "custom" vps packages. Normally means they want more bandwidth or ram for a cheaper price can get quite anoying over time. especially when they start trying to get normal prices knocked down.

The 5 most common questions I get:

1. Where are your servers based?
2. How many emails can I create?
3. Do you have 24/7 support?
4. What's the difference between windows and linux?
5. Can you give me any discounts?

That shows that hosting is a competitive business indeed, especially on pricing.

We've noticed a significant decrease in actual sales tickets compared to orders after adding answers to most frequently asked questions on our website.

The #1 question we get asked is if we can "match or beat" pricing from [insert some low-cost budget discount cheapo company here].

The answer we give is always "No."

Then we encourage the potential customer to sign up for hosting with the company they mentioned.. and we tell them that we offer a refugee special package for when they are ready to switch to us.

:)

Do you allow warez linking? NO files will be hosted, but, links to rapidshapre, etc.

The answer is a big fat no, however, we can provide you with hosting any legal content :D. My sales guys then inform the people that are looking to sign up that I used to investigate federal felony's in the army lol. Live chat then gets closed quickly :D

We will match a larger more reputable company's offers SOMETIMES. Such as specials (depending on the special though) and we will offer discounts if people ask them, not much, but a little bit, sometimes as much as 10% recurring if we're feeling giving and they can talk us into it. However, all discounts must be personally approved by either me or the sales department manager, or finance manager.

It's almost always a request to beat a competitive offer, either on price or bandwidth included.

where are your servers located?
it is your own data center or leased data center ??
why you are not providing unlimited hosting like others?
how many websites i can create with my account?
can you give me domain registration for free?

more...

I have a standard answer when a potential client ask us to match pricing.

I say: we compete with quality services and reliable servers. Those that cannot match with us on these, will compete on pricing as a last resort. Most people will understand this.

"How long have you been in business?"
"Where are your servers located?"
"How much staff do you have?"
"Do you have your own techs in the datacenter?"

That's all i can think of at the moment.

How long have you been in business?
Where are your servers located?
What is java-hosting?
Why do I need java-hosting?

This may not be specifically about website hosting since a lot of our business is web development, but usually:

1) Can you make a super-CMS thing so my staff can make updates?
2) Can you make the above custom-coded website for non-custom-coded prices? Ie, dirt-cheap?
3) Can you then spend an hour making up a written quotation so that we can consider your services?
4) Is it ok if after i get your quote, we just ignore you because we were just kicking tires anyways? :)


Lawrence

"do you offer any discount?"