Why buy local?

I was recently meeting with a potential Hosted VoIP customer and telling them about our products.  I told them about our feature rich offerings and how we had everything that they needed including Web Conferencing, Video Conferencing, and Voice Recording all bundled into our offering.  I also was explaining to them that in my opinion, most Hosted platforms offer about 90% of the same features but that there were some key elements that they should be looking for like Geo-Redundancy, and a strong uptime guarantee.

This particular customer was already on a hosted platform so they were very familiar with all of the options and how the system worked so it was a fairly easy presentation for me.  At the end of the meeting they asked me one simple questions.  Why should we go with you over our current national provider that starts with a V and rhymes with horizon?

My answer was "your looking at it".  By using us you get all the benefits of a nationally offered hosted solution but with us you get "US".  I promised that you would never get lost in the 1-800 support nightmare and that you would always have a local presence to assist with all of your needs.  Including, my personal cell phone number if needed.

The offerings we have will compete with any large national or regional provider but you will never get the value added service that you will get from a local provider.

Yes, I did get the deal.