Disaster Recovery: A First-Hand User Experience for Sales

Working with VARs we know all about disaster recovery, business continuity, and business continuation—whatever way you wish to describe it. It’s a frequent entry point into new customers for many VARs. We’ve written lead-generation articles, prospecting value propositions and sales qualification questions about it. We’ve coached sales reps on how to position it in sales proposals and close.

But here at KLA Group, we’d never experienced it. Until Labor Day weekend, when our hosting provider’s server went down Saturday morning—and the provider doesn’t provide weekend or after-hours support. Down went not only our websites and blog, but also our email.

While it was a weekend—and a holiday weekend at that—you’d think we’d be okay to hang on until Tuesday. But then the questions started.

The more serious questions quickly followed.

It situations like this, knowing so much about IT is both a blessing and a curse. Yes, we logged a ticket in hopes that someone would be monitoring it. But nobody was.

There I was with my IT staff person, on what should have been a leisurely holiday weekend, wondering how we were going to support our customers come Tuesday morning. More importantly, how were we going to support our prospects? We’re a project-based business. Continued sales are critical to our livelihood. Communication with prospects is equally important as communication with current customers.

In your disaster plan you may provide for continued support of your customers, but what’s the support plan for your sales team and your prospects? With medical practices you tell them that they have to be able to continue taking new appointments. In your disaster plan, your salespeople need to be able to continue doing business just as much as your techs.

In our experience, the easiest piece of the business to support was our customers. Our virtual training tools and phones all worked. It was the sales activities that were the most difficult. So I ask you, what’s your disaster recovery/business continuity/business continuation plan for your sales team? What if your CRM goes down? Or email? Or the whole business? How will you sell?

You may make customers the priority, but without new business, how long can you afford to stay in business?

These are the questions to ask yourself. And they are questions to ask your prospects.

How does my story end? We migrated our websites and blog to another hosting company with better support and signed up with a backup hosting company. Luckily, we were already in the process of moving email to the Cloud. We just moved faster than we’d planned. And, we updated our business continuity plan to include sales.

Do you have a disaster recovery story or any advice you'd like to share? Please feel free to add your comments below.