Inquisix FAQ
Overview
What is Inquisix?
Why use Inquisix?
How does Inquisix work?
Do you have to give a referral to get one?
How can I get the most from my Inquisix membership?
How does Inquisix use my profile information?
What’s the purpose of the Contact Vault? Why is it needed?
Pricing/Value Proposition
How much does Inquisix cost?
I’m a sales rep and I want to join Inquisix. What’s your value proposition that I can pass to my boss to justify the monthly cost?
Other
How is Inquisix different than my in-person networking group?
How is Inquisix different from Hoovers, JigSaw, Spoke, ZoomInfo and other information brokers?
How does Inquisix differ from LinkedIn?
Why do you have to be a member? Why doesn’t Inquisix just sell referrals?
Overview
What is Inquisix?
Inquisix is a members-only community of small business owners, sales people, rainmakers and anyone else who runs a referral-based business. It allows members to securely give referrals to their hard-won contacts while getting referrals to the people they need to meet.
Selling by referral is far more productive than cold calling. With referrals, your prospect already knows something about who you are, what you have to offer, and why a conversation might have some value to him or her. You’ve built instant credibility before you even get on the phone. We’re sales people, too, and that’s why we built Inquisix.
Giving referrals to your customers is also productive. You increase your reputation with your customers by introducing them to people who help them improve their business. Instead of just another vendor, you become the trusted advisor.
Inquisix referrals earn members reputation within the site. The better your reputation, the more likely another member will network with you to give and get referrals.
Inquisix is not about finding more or better names to cold call; it’s about meeting better prospects through Inquisix Trusted Referrals™. And it’s not about meeting people within a few degrees of separation. Rather, it’s about matching what you with other Inquisix members based on how you can help each other.
Watch this helpful video to find out more.
Why use Inquisix?
Are you tired and frustrated with cold calling? Are your perfectly written emails falling on deaf ears or worse, getting blocked by email spam filters? According to a study by eMarketer, the second highest source of influence on a firm’s future purchases are the businesses calling on that firm. The challenge is getting someone to take your call. Instead of cold calling, you can leverage an Inquisix Trusted Referral™ to be introduced to the contacts you want to meet by someone they already know and trust.
How does Inquisix work?
Inquisix is unlike any other sales site, lead club, social networking site or list broker. It’s the members-only service where you can secure the Trusted Referrals™ you want. Business owners, sales reps, business development professionals and other rainmakers are invited by their peers to join Inquisix to selectively share hard-won contacts with colleagues.
In the real world, sales success is about leveraging three things: who you are, who you know and who you want to meet. We’ve built Inquisix to work the same way.
To get started, Inquisix needs to know:
- Who you are: Each new member completes a profile, which helps fellow members learn about you and what you have to offer to their private contacts. Your profile also includes your reputation, as determined by fellow members as you give and get referrals.
- Who you know: New members easily and securely upload their private contacts into their own secure Contact Vault™. Your contacts remain locked in your Contact Vault unless and until you choose to share one of them with another member through an Inquisix Trusted Referral™.
- Who you want to meet: Tell Inquisix who’s on your prospecting list by region, title, company size, or other criteria.
Now you’re in business. Once you’re set up, Inquisix goes to work to match members based on the business contacts they know and the new contacts they want to meet. This is targeted networking at its best, with no wasted time trolling through screen after screen to find names of people you might want to talk to. Inquisix continuously checks members’ contacts lists for you – 24/7. As new members join or when current members add to their Contact Vault, Inquisix will continue to search for the people you want to meet.
Do you have to give a referral to get one?
Inquisix members find success when there is a balance between the number of referrals they give and the number of referrals they get. Just like in the real world of “what comes around, goes around,” Inquisix members can expect to get a referral when they’re just as willing to give a referral.
When you give a referral to a colleague, you usually expect to get something back in return. This is the give-to-get approach, where you give a referral and earn the right to get one back. In Inquisix, you can give a referral to one member while getting a referral from another member.
Inquisix isn’t anything like other services. Instead of a searchable database full of names and addresses sourced from a list broker, Inquisix is a community of professionals who recognize the value of their contacts. Inquisix members populate the system with the people who would welcome a referral from them. To most business owners, sales reps and rainmakers, their rolodex is their life; they’ve built it over many years of hard work and persistence. No one in their right mind would simply give up these names to a faceless system. Instead, Inquisix offers a secure way to upload valuable contacts to a member’s private Contact Vault™ so that the system, not the users, can search them. Ultimately, Inquisix will present members with a list of potential Trusted Referrals™, but it’s up to the member to decide if and when to make an exchange.
There’s another consideration in the give-to-get model we use with Inquisix. Many sales reps find that by introducing their customers to new (non-competitive) solution providers, they position themselves as a resource and enhance their reputation with that customer. This is known as the giver’s gain theory. Your Inquisix reputation depends on giving good referrals and treating referrals you receive with the same courtesy.
Unlike other systems, Inquisix referrals are earned based on your reputation with prior referrals and not the number of contacts you are connected to.
How can I get the most from my Inquisix membership?
Inquisix offers members a chance to meet other successful sales people, regardless of industry or geography.
- Members communicate and network as they share referrals, so the more referrals you get, the more referrals you receive and the more contacts you add to your Contact Vault, the more members you’ll meet.
- Inquisix partners with local in-person networking organizations. Let us know if you’d like Inquisix to work with your local group!
- Members communicate with one another and with Inquisix management on the Member Forum – share your ideas about features and functionality, referrals, and share sales and networking tips.
- Read the Inquisix Blog to read about trends in sales and business development and participate in the discussion.
How does Inquisix use my profile information?
Your Inquisix profile is your calling card, your elevator pitch, to other members who are thinking of networking with you. Your profile is critical because it introduces you to the members who can put you in touch with the contacts you want to meet. Every time you request a referral, your profile accompanies the request. So the more you add to your profile – your photo, a description of the product or service you have to offer, your background, etc. – the easier it is for members to see how you can help their prospects and customers. Remember that Inquisix helps you meet other sales professionals so they can make referrals for you. The more you can tell them about yourself and the value you bring to the table, the easier it is to secure an Inquisix Trusted Referral™.
What’s the purpose of the Contact Vault? Why is it needed?
We’re sales people and business owners too – we know the importance of protecting our contacts and our relationship with them. We’re not ready to list them on social networks for the world to see. Instead we’re going to keep them confidential. So the Contact Vault is a secure database of just your contacts. No one has access to your contacts in the vault. Other members can search for the contacts they want to meet but will not get those contact’s information or which member can make the referral.
Each member has their own secure contact vault. Other members make requests to Inquisix for a referral and Inquisix sends that request only to the member who could fulfill the referral. That member remains anonymous to the first member until the referral has been approved. So if a referral is denied, then that member and their contact’s information is withheld from the first member making the referral request.
Pricing/Value Proposition
How much does Inquisix cost?
Membership is free during the current beta trial period. After beta, we anticipate that monthly pricing will be roughly $49 per month. The subscription would be charged monthly to your credit card and could be cancelled at any time, although there is no credit returned for a partial month. We anticipate that most of our members will expense the membership fee back to their employer. Companies looking to purchase Inquisix memberships for their entire sales team should contact Inquisix at 617-467-5200 or info@inquisix.com and ask for volume pricing details.
I’m a sales rep and I want to join Inquisix. What’s your value proposition that I can pass to my boss to justify the monthly cost?
Our value proposition is simple – “Inquisix shortens sales cycles and increases the number of deals by helping you meet better prospects through Inquisix Trusted Referrals™.”
Here are some cost comparisons against other traditional lead acquisition approaches:
Telemarketing. Companies often use outsourced telemarketing firms to generate meetings for their sales reps. These companies charge anywhere from $500 to $1000 per meeting booked, and sometimes even more. Even if you only set up three new meetings per month with Inquisix, the monthly fee of $49 is much less expensive than a telemarketer’s services.
Tradeshows. Compare the cost of a monthly Inquisix membership to the cost of leads captured at a tradeshow. One of our members told us that his marketing team brought back 200 names from an executive tradeshow, of which 15 entered his sales reps’ funnels. His company spent $15,000 to attend that show, or $1,000 per lead. With Inquisix, these leads would have costs just $49.
Prospects from the Marketing Dept. Depending on who you’re trying to reach and the price point of your solution, prospects generated from marketing may not always generate the leads you need in your timeframe. If marketing is getting started in Q2 on a new lead generation program, you probably won’t see results until Q3. When you already know who you need to meet, referral selling is the fastest way to get to the decision-makers that matter.
And don’t forget – Inquisix is not uploading the company’s contacts to share with the community. We’re not a list broker. Only those contacts that you can make a referral to are uploaded to your secure Contact Vault™. So your boss should have no concerns about you giving referrals.
Other
How is Inquisix different than my in-person networking group?
Inquisix is a great compliment to trade organizations, in-person networking groups and local chambers of commerce. Extend your group’s value to your members by creating your own private Inquisix referral exchange system. You’ll encourage them to network amongst themselves for more business value in addition to traditional in-person and social networking activities you provide. If you run an in-person networking group, give Inquisix a call to see how we can work together!
How is Inquisix different from Hoovers, JigSaw, Spoke, ZoomInfo and other information brokers?
Inquisix is not competitive with list brokers like Hoovers, JigSaw, Spoke and others because they provide massive volumes of generic data on industries, companies and contacts to anyone willing to buy. These brokers may collect the data in different ways, but they deliver the exact same information to all of their paying customers, no matter who they are or what they have to offer. These services differentiate themselves from one another based on data quality, depth and means of collection. The important difference is that where these services provide data, Inquisix provides action.
Working solely with data from a list broker, a sales person is still left to make hundreds of cold calls to people who are likely being called by anyone and everyone else who bought these names. They don’t know you, they may not know you’re company, and their not expecting your call. Talk about an uphill climb! (For more information on what we think of cold calling – and it isn’t pretty – visit our blog.)
Inquisix is a community of sales and business development professionals who know that referral selling is far more productive than cold calling to a list of strangers, or following up with 200 trade show leads where your company gave away booth trinkets.
Inquisix is the site that we as sales people always wished for. It makes it easy for top-notch sales people to put more deals – not just leads – in the pipeline by exchanging Trusted Referrals™. Working with information about who you are, who you know and who you want to meet, Inquisix matches members who can help each other. The members then personally decide whether to share information, and then rate the success of the referral experience.
Inquisix is about giving referrals to increase your reputation with your customers while getting referrals to increase your business.
How does Inquisix differ from LinkedIn?
We like LinkedIn. The founders of Inquisix can be found in LinkedIn here and here. And we use it as it is intended – a social networking site to stay connected with our peers. As business-to-business salespeople, we don’t use LinkedIn to generate new business. Why? Because as good sales people, we’d be nuts to expose our prospect and customer list to the entire world. As good sales people, we understand that who we know from a sales point of view is information we share only when it makes sense for us and our customers.
Another thing to consider is how LinkedIn ranks, or values, each member. On LinkedIn, members are ranked by how many other members they are linked to; this is about quantity versus quality. Inquisix, by contrast, is a members-only service that helps sales people establish a reputation based on the value they offer and the quality of the referrals they share. Inquisix provides members with the ability to secure Trusted Referrals™ from fellow members. These warm introductions to the prospects you want to meet are facilitated by someone that prospect already knows and trusts. As a result, you’ve got instant credibility when you begin communicating with that contact.
Why do you have to be a member? Why doesn’t Inquisix just sell referrals?
By establishing a membership-based service, we’re ensuring participation by sales and business development professionals who are committed to helping each other out over time. If we offered the service on a transaction-only basis, we’d be in the list broker business, which from our own experience doesn’t have the same impact on the sales cycle.