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 part of a large company/organization and I want to join Inquisix. What’s your value proposition that I can pass on 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 connects businesses to MORE business. Inquisix’s robust community of small business owners, sales people and connectors believe in the revenue-generating power of the referral. Our solution takes informal networking and new business outreach to an online Web 2.0 community making it super-efficient – 24/7. For less time spent, money invested and effort expended our members can network, exchange ideas and get referrals to exactly their most desired demographics.
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.
Giving referrals increases 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.
Every Inquisix referral earn members reputation points 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™.
Watch this helpful video to find out more.
Why use Inquisix?
Are you tired and frustrated with cold calling? Is traditional networking not as productive as you need? 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 already selling goods and services to that firm. The challenge is getting someone to take your call or meeting. You can leverage an Inquisix Trusted Referrals™ 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 networking tool. We’re not a sales site, lead club, social networking site or list broker. It’s the members-only community where you can secure the Trusted Referrals™ you want. Small business owners, sales reps, business development professionals and other connectors are invited by their peers to join Inquisix.
In the real world, business 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™ until you choose to share one of them with another member through an Inquisix Trusted Referral™.
- Who you want to meet: Tell Inquisix your ideal customer or client. You can search 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. 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 alert you.
Do you have to give a referral to get one?
No, you don’t have to “give to get” a referral. Most members do, however because they find success when there’s 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 be paid in kind as some point in the future. This is the give-to-get approach. In Inquisix, you can give a referral to one member while getting a referral from another member.
There’s another consideration in the give-to-get model we use with Inquisix. Many business people find that by introducing their customers and clients to new (non-competitive) solution providers, they position themselves as a resource and enhance their reputation with that person. 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
How can I get the most from my Inquisix membership?
Inquisix offers members a chance to meet other successful business people, regardless of industry or geography.
- As a member, you are automatically in the contact pool to be referred to!
- Members communicate and network by sharing referrals. In fact, the more referrals you give and the more referrals you receive- the more members you’ll meet and add to your Contact Vault™!
- Inquisix partners with local in-person networking organizations. Let us know if you’d like Inquisix to work with your group! Contact us here.
- 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. 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 relationship with them. As we’re not ready to list them on social networks for the world to see, we created the Inquisix Contact Vault™ as a secure database and each member has their own secure Contact Vault™. No one has access to contacts in your vault. So while other members can search for the contacts they want to meet, they will not get those contact’s pertinent information or which member can make the referral.
Other members make requests to Inquisix for a referral and Inquisix sends that request only to the member who could fulfill the referral. Members remain anonymous until the referral has been approved, and if a referral is denied, then the member’s information (and their contact’s) is withheld from the requester.
Pricing/Value Proposition
How much does Inquisix cost?
Updated June 2009 Membership is free during the current beta trial period. Once the beta period ends, there will be 3 levels of membership, with costs ranging from free to $10/month for the group membership and $39/month for a full membership. Details of the features for each level of membership to follow.
In-person networking group managers looking to offer Inquisix memberships to their members should contact Inquisix at 617-467-5200 or info@inquisix.com and ask for details.
I’m a part of a large company/organization and I want to join Inquisix. What’s your value proposition that I can pass on to justify the monthly cost?
Our value proposition is simple – “Inquisix connects businesses to MORE business!”
We harness the revenue-generating power of the referral through Inquisix Trusted Referrals™ system. Our solution takes informal networking and new business outreach to an online Web 2.0 community making it super-efficient — 24/7. For less time spent, money invested and effort expended our members can network, exchange ideas and get referrals to exactly their most desired demographics.
Here are some cost comparisons against other traditional lead acquisition and new-business generation 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 complement 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. If you run an in-person networking group, contact Inquisix 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 business people wished for. 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 people, we don’t use LinkedIn to generate new business. Why? Because we’d be nuts to expose our prospect and customer list to the entire world. We understand that who we know from a business 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 business 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 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. Plus, customers and clients don’t appreciate being “sold,” so we feel it’s a variable best left out the Inquisix equation.