“We need 3 PCs Networked Please.”

While in Las Vegas a lady left a voicemail asking us to help them out with networking together 3 PCs.

A quick call back to them late last week to let them know we received the message but were getting caught up and would get back to them led to another call last Friday and a chat with the general manager (GM).

They had spec’d out a Dell server at $8,000 for their needs!

Okay, so we needed to see what was going on so we arranged for an appointment that ended up happening this morning.

To date, none, none of the other I.T. service providers had called them back besides us.

Think about that for a second.

No one bothered to call back to even ask them what it was they were looking for. No one thought about how 3 users connected to Exchange and SharePoint hosting (OWN) resold by them would add that little bit more to the bottom line.

The icing on the cake was the actual visit.

It seems that the lady that put out the feeler call to all those I.T. shops including our own had somehow managed to interpret the GM’s instructions about getting things networked together to mean her machine, the QuickBooks user’s machine, and the GM’s machine connected to a server.

In reality, there were about 10 seats with a couple of laptops needed in the mix. From there, they need at least two new workstations, Remote Web Workplace connectivity was a must once demonstrated for key folks, Office 2007 licensing was needed for most of their desktops and laptops, AntiVirus, a firewall, and more.

So, where does that leave us? At a very distinct advantage to put together an awesome solution around Small Business Server 2008, Intel Server Hardware, Intel Workstation Hardware, a Microsoft Open Value Agreement for their licensing needs, and more!

Lesson to be learned?

• Always be prepared to take the necessary extra steps to look into any opportunity that comes our way.

Sometimes those opportunities may seem like they are “not worth it”, but even the smallest of deals can be that seed sown that later pays off in the way of strong business relationships and business referrals.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer