Market Your MSP (Part 1)

Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2NHRRDl
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MSPs can easily talk to each other about the latest gadgets and gizmos, but talking to other people about that same technology can be more of a struggle. It is the same with MSPs and their conversations with businesses. 

Watching someone try to sell their services to people can be like watching a slow-moving train wreck — there is enthusiasm when MSPs talk to business owners, but it can be hard to translate that excitement to the client. 

That is where the importance of conversations comes into play.

If you’re an MSP, then your entire training for becoming an MSP has been technical. You learned the tips and tricks and workarounds for all things technology. Now, all of a sudden, you are being asked to work with people and explain your services and abilities to them. You most likely do not have the training or knowledge to have conversations that will enable those business professionals to fully understand what it is that you do and what you can do for them. 

When entering those conversations, it is important to approach them as people and not as machines. You cannot simply throw solutions their way expecting them to grasp what it is that you are trying to tell them. You have to listen — find common ground and really understand what it is that they care about. 

If you are only talking about technology, it will most likely make their eyes glaze over and feel impersonal. At the selling stage, business professionals do not care about the technology — they care about whether they like you or not. Look at the technology solution through their eyes. See how this technology can truly help them, not from an IT standpoint, but from a personal perspective. 

Here’s an example. An MSP makes a business’s internet speed much faster and its bandwidth much better. The MSP will look at this solution as a complete technical solution. But, the business professional is excited about having extra time due to not having to actually drive into the office, letting them attend their daughter’s softball game. Both people had totally different standards to measure success, but both situations were using the same technology. 

Ultimately, people make most decisions with their hearts, not their heads. If you are great at connecting with the person before talking business, then selling to them will be much better for both parties. 

The 6 Steps of the IT Consultative Sales Process

The currently dominant sales processes aren’t able to generate enough leads nor provide proper differentiation for MSPs. This undermines any chance for predictable growth. When they aren’t able to win new business in a predictable way, managed services providers can’t grow, develop new services, hire the ‘A’ players, develop internal processes or scale. The root problem is that the current transactional (the client is looking for an IT provider) and solution (IT Infrastructure or NIST Cybersecurity Assessments) sales models are reactionary. These methods assume that the client understands the problem and has a pretty good idea of the solution they’re looking for. These models don’t enable the managed services provider to elevate the message, educate the client about what’s important, differentiate the MSP’s offering, set proper expectations, or start a conversation without a buying intent. The IT consultative sales process does all of that and thus provides far more predictability.

Why IT Consultative Sales important for MSPs?

The IT service market has been saturated, the offerings have matured and the typical IT infrastructure problems are easily solved. Generating demand among high-value, high-maturity clients with business potential is a challenge as they very likely already have an IT service provider they’re happy with. Potential clients are not out shopping.

Once the referral channels have dried out, selling MSP services became a very unpredictable and long process. If a prospect has no visible pain she won't change her provider if only for a better price. It’s difficult to differentiate from the competition as everybody can claim to be a world-class MSP.

The current transactional and solution sales processes have proven to be successful when prospects have immediate and obvious IT needs. That’s why referrals worked so well and why inbound calls get through the website. IT infrastructure or cybersecurity assessments have been a big help to manage the process by qualifying clients and offering an IT solution.

The IT consultative sales process is a proactive one, that does not require the prospect to start the buying process and it performs better on this new landscape.

What is the process of IT Consultative Sales?

The IT consultative sales process consists of six major steps. Each works toward differentiating your MSP business from the current competition by redefining the market and services. You are not claiming “to be better, faster, cheaper, or more” you are claiming to solve different problems and defining a unique context of your IT services. The process itself helps to set their expectations of their current provider higher and to evaluate them in your context.

1. Differentiate Your MSP’s Message - The IT consultative sales process starts by developing an elevated message. This message drives a wedge between you and your market competitors, reframes the problem the prospect has as well as the expectations. Typically this is a new “category” of services they have not used before.
2. Capture Leads with Education on Business Problems They Want to Solve - The sales process is supported by specific, unique, and very valuable content. This content helps to educate your potential clients on the business problems they want to solve, relates to your services and exhibits the value of the “category” of your services.
3. Qualify Leads Focusing on Quick Win Solutions - The lead generators are followed by a first interaction which is your introduction. This first meeting sets you apart from the current IT service provider “category” and quickly demonstrates many of their current problems you can actually solve.
4. Deliver Value Connecting Business Problems to Technology Solutions - The first meeting leads to a business workshop where you are able to lay down the map for success. You can articulate their business challenges, current reality and set proper IT goals for them. This workshop helps them translate the “vision” to actionable steps.
5. Gain Clarity with Proposals - Your proposal does not consist of a final and large commitment engagement (such as switching their managed service provider). Instead it’s a “springboard” engagement, which is easier to buy and solves a very specific problem.
6. Upsell Your Clients - This process expands the IT strategy where the client starts engaging you, leading to further engagement and value delivery.. 

HOW DO I LEARN MORE ABOUT IT CONSULTATIVE SALES?

The 3 best consultative sales books:

1. Let's Get Real or Let's Not Play: Transforming the Buyer/Seller Relationship
2. The SaaS Sales Method: Sales As a Science
3. The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation

The 3 best consultative sales videos:

1. The Power of Remote Sales
2. What is the Difference Between Consultative Selling and Normal Selling?
3. What's the difference between Consultative and Provocative Selling?

The 3 best consultative sales blogs:

1. The 6 Principles of a Consultative Sales Process
2. The Consultative Sales Process: A New Model of Selling
3. Digital Maturity Group

3 previously posted Managed Services Platform blogs about IT consultative sales:  

1. Two Ways to Differentiate Your MSP
2. What is the One Business Skill MSP Leaders Can Teach Their Clients?
3. Why MSPs are not Closing Business Enough

5 reasons MSPs do not have predictable IT sales

If you are reading this blog, it’s likely that you’re the best managed IT service provider in town, you have the most mature offering, hire and train the best people, and have the best internal processes an MSP can imagine. However, it’s also probable that your sales are just not at the level you want them to be. You are not alone. Even the best MSPs have issues with sales. But underperformance in sales is only one symptom of the problem. The root cause is that your sales are not predictable, and this leads to all sorts of issues. Let's dig into the cause, then see what you can do, then develop a plan to make this happen!

Differentiate yourself from your competition and

become sales ready in 30 days

In the good old days, referrals from your clients came in like clockwork. With your client's testimonials, you were able to close 80-90% of the leads you generated. The competition was weak, and it was pretty easy to communicate why your service offering is superior. IT problems were obvious to clients and business owners wanted to solve those visible issues to grow their business.

Over time your potential clients have been increasingly able to solve their visible IT issues. The market is saturated and it’s now very hard to differentiate. Compounding all this is dramatically decreasing opportunities coming from referrals.

This leads to several issues: 

Coming in second against "trunk slammers" who win your well-deserved deals by undercutting your prices. It’s frustrating because you know the service quality will be lacking, and the client will be unhappy.

The new website with expensive marketing materials even promoted by paid advertisements did not yield results. Leads are coming in from all over the place but your well-crafted marketing campaigns.

You hired an IT sales expert or inside sales lead generation company, but the calls were unqualified and you couldn’t convey your message, so most conversations didn’t lead to sales.

"Building an MSP is hard enough, and business owners should have a predictable sales process to fuel the company internal process and service developments."

What are the main reasons for IT sales being unpredictable?

I know you want to jump into the solutions, but the major part of solving a problem is understanding the causes. Let's go quickly through the main issues:

1. You want Control but your IT sales is too reactionary

You may have noticed a trend of business owners getting motivated to switching IT providers or replacing internal IT when "SOMETHING" happens. It can be anything. Their IT guy leaves them, their IT provider finally dropped the ball and they’re fed up, or they’ve realized that they have outgrown their provider. 

The key is that "SOMETHING" has happened, which leads to the need for a new provider. After this "SOMETHING" has happened, they google the local managed IT service providers, and the IT sales activity starts without delay. 

This "SOMETHING" is out of your control. It can’t be triggered by you, but without it none of your MSP marketing and IT sales activities can start effectively generating predictable demand.

That leads you to invest in MSP marketing and IT sales, but with no control over meager demand being generated for your services.

2. You want to solve real problems but prospects look only for "Better IT"

"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses" - Henry Ford

Your prospects are no different. You have been solving root problems they do not even understand need to be addressed. They don’t know why the world needs security policies, an IT roadmap, or moving legacy things to the cloud. They want "better IT", whatever it means. Your sophisticated approach can be intimidating and let them feel "we are not there yet". But eliminating those issues would create "better IT" eventually.

Your "trunk slammer" competition can cater to their needs with deceptive communication. Not that they are bad guys, but they can address the client's needs very inexpensively. Yes, they’re soothing the symptoms, but not curing the disease, because their methods are very cheap. That never actually achieves "better IT" so they keep changing providers, and repeating the trial. That can engender a negative view overall - "IT guys are all the same... they just don’t get it".

That all means you lose deals even though you are the clear choice for the discerning business and were confident at the IT sales meeting that you got this.

3. You want to solve business problems but "they just don't get it"

Remember how IT sales used to be much easier when your value was more obvious and naturally presented? They had slow computers, and you gave them fast computers. They had slow internet, you gave them fast internet. They had devices, cables, and applications all over the place and you uncluttered it. Primarily your solutions were DIRECTLY addressing their obvious tangible pains.

Unfortunately, your other values such as proactive support, IT Roadmap, unified stack, employee education, and security policies don’t perform so DIRECTLY. They have to burn calories to understand why an IT roadmap and a lifecycle management plan lower the cost of their IT investments. They just don’t see any of this as clearly as they understood the faster computer benefits.

Now you’ve become disconnected from most of your prospects. You feel like there are no "ideal" customers out there anymore.

4. You want to Differentiate but the "other IT guys" are all around.

"To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail." - Anonymous

Your marketing and sales effort is geared toward the "problems" and "pains" you can solve. And no wonder all your competition promises to solve the same sets of problems. As more providers start up, more people are fishing in your pond. As fewer clients can perceive the less obvious IT problems, the smaller the pond is.

However, there is another pond. A pond which is getting bigger and is still mostly undiscovered. It takes courage to leave the pond everybody is fishing in for an empty pond nobody seems to be interested in.

This pond is full of mature, financially stable companies with leadership teams that have already invested in IT, and have no VISIBLE IT problems. They have their managed IT service provider already and they are happy with it. 

However, these companies are suffering different problems that seem unrelated to IT infrastructure, like weak employee productivity, lack of excellent internal communication, the management team lacking proper data in their weekly reports or the need to automate many cumbersome processes. These are NOT VISIBLE IT problems, but you can solve them, and communicate this to generate interest.

Without finding the right pond to fish in, you are lost in the noise and have no chance to differentiate.

5. You feel you got the deal this but the prospect goes dark on you.

The last issue is not something new for you. Engaging with you takes a bold move from your prospects. They need to trust they can give you the keys to their kingdom, they need to invest in their infrastructure, they need to talk to the MSP they’re leaving, exposing them to security risks, they need to face some internal challenges of adopting new processes and come to terms with why they are paying twice what they did before.

The barrier of entry and the switching of costs are enormous for your clients. I know you try to offset this with "free onboarding" or very generous project prices upfront. But this is a fact that the better your services are, and the better your solution stack is, and the higher your maturity is, their switching cost is going to be even higher. The switching cost can be the sole cause  that kills your deal.

Without the experience of being a client, they do not understand why they should be a client. It’s a Catch 22.

Without being able to engage them with low-risk, low-switching cost engagements, your competition might steal your deals as the perceived switching costs might be way lower.

What can you do to make your IT sales predictable?

This article is geared toward the realization of the problem rather than the presentation of the solution. But I do not want to leave you hanging without any hint of what can be done. So here it is in a nutshell.

1. Elevate the message

Your IT Infrastructure, Cloud, or even cyber security theme do not provide the necessary differentiation and the leading edge you need. 

Your theme has to address the pains and problems of executives, not the subject of your service offering. 

Your theme has to be exciting and forward-thinking enough to attract the business owners who have NO VISIBLE IT problems yet. 

Your theme has to make your competition puzzled and too scared to even try to copy. 

I am not going to spoil anything here, and you know why.... because we do not want to educate your competition, right? More later...

This elevated message helps you to build a marketing and sales funnel that actively attracts your ideal target clients. It makes lead generation more natural and has conversations with prospects without requiring the "SOMETHING" to happen to them to look for providers.

2. Implement a IT Consultative Sales Funnel

IT Consultative Sales Funnel is a very special funnel. It is a thorough, slow, and step-by-step process to educate your prospects and provide value along the way. It is not for the impatient ones. The IT sales process consists of a well-crafted landing page leading to a well-crafted lead generator leading to a well-crafted call to action, then to a well crafted first conversation to a well-crafted consultation meeting and then a well-crafted proposal leading to a well-crafted paid consultation engagement leading to well-crafted processes to expand to ongoing services. 

Wow... this is a process of eight different well-crafted things... you might feel overwhelmed. The exciting thing is that as the process is linear, pushing people to the top of the funnel and optimizing the steps to help them get through is pretty simple. Also, it gives you a unique process, and is invisible to your ever-catching-up competition.

3. Kickstart The IT Sales with Specific Campaigns

Your IT consultative sales process has enormous advantages: 

It can be applied to any part of the sales funnel. It can be at the top of the funnel for people who don’t yet realize they have problems down to prospects with whom you had some engagement recently and lost a deal.

It can be applied to existing clients as well. As the process has consultative elements, you can perform those events with them for client engagement or even expansion.

It can be a great source of referrals. Not to become a client directly but referrals to get more qualified leads into your IT consultative sales funnel. You can distribute this funnel quickly to your clients and ask referrals for the consulting engagements. (like your consulting sales process has an attractive lead generator, or you have a Workshop of any kind that can be referred to). This can be viral, meaning the leads can be generated automatically based on your IT consultative sales activities. Just like, you may remember, for dropbox.

With only parts of the IT sales funnel ready, you can kickstart campaigns for prospects and clients to start fueling your referral engine. 

Plan to make a predictable IT sales funnel

I know this is a lot to take in—many new concepts from the "SOMETHING" to different ponds to fish in and entry barriers. There are many new concepts from fueled referrals and IT consultative sales. I know... this is good news... the more overwhelming this is, the more difficult it’ll be for your cheap competition to emulate.

Also, you might feel this is a "ton of work" you cannot commit to.

But you have a choice to make. To step back now or to push this further. Ignore the opportunity or move and learn more. If you are the brave type, if you are like the cutting edge, if you are thinking forward, you know this is worth exploring further. We know you need a plan to put this together and have a process to implement the ideas.

A blog can’t cover it all, and we wanted to do more...

We created a 7 Day Video Series to go into the details. Why 7 days? Because you can leverage a 5 Step Framework and a 2 Step Implementation Process. We want to give you time to digest all steps separately and let the different action items sink in. It will provide you with a quick but comprehensive look at the actions that need to be taken for predictable sales.

Why did we do that? We believe that MSP owners have been working too much too hard on their business and deserve more predictability. One thing that seems out of control for you is sales. We want to help solve this problem so you can predictably grow your business. You can provide predictability for your employees and their families and get rid of the anxiety of being unable to control your business's primary source of fuel: new clients.

Your web conference setup sucks (and how to fix it)

In today’s distributed workforce everyone is settling into a routine. Many, however,  haven't really put objective thought into how their presence is viewed by their clients. We are still playing by old rules: dress nice, speak clearly, have a predefined agenda. This is no longer the case, and it takes a back seat to web presence. So, for those of you who don’t want to read this whole thing, here are the 3 things you need to know.

1. Your web setup is too casual and unprofessional.
2. Your current setup will cost you customers in the long run.
3. For less than the cost of a new outfit you can distinguish yourself.

We have been given a lot of grace lately but this is going to change.  There is a right way to present yourself online, just as there is a right way to present yourself in an in-person meeting.  Would you show up to a meeting without considering your appearance? Right now you think you look nice but in reality you are coming across like a 5th year college senior. Let us show you how you could look with a little work and you can decide if it is worth it.  

Honestly you are being outperformed by twitch kids in their mom’s basement.  Let's fix that.

Your sound sucks

One of the problems we have with web meetings is that even if you are dressed for success you can still look and sound like crap. That three piece suit will not save you if your microphone makes you sound like you are under water. Let me say this clearly:

Sound is King.

It no longer matters how many thousands of dollars you have spent on a wardrobe, your customer will not pay attention if they cannot understand you.

For less than a pair of cheap shoes you can upgrade your microphone. Blue Snowball mics are pretty much idiot proof. However, feel free to do your own research. But get ANYTHING that is not a built in mic on a webcam or laptop.

You look terrible

Most built in webcams as well are horrible. Some of you are lucky enough to have a high def camera but they still have crappy lenses.There is only so much you can do with a tiny lens that was meant for quick conversations and government spying.  A good camera is less than a sport coat from an outlet store. Getting a Logitech Brio will make that colorful outfit really look stunning even in low light.

Also lets talk light,  your houses are dark places. Instead of new pants, get a ring light or soft box from your favorite vendor, brighter is better, but make it dimmable because you value your eyes. Open your windows, sit them on one side of you, do not look directly into them.  One side of your body should be lighter than the other.

FLOOD your room with light. 

If you think you have too much light in your room you are wrong. For comparison I have 3 west facing windows 9 sq ft each wide open and 2x15,000 Lux lights at 6800K.  You should be able to do surgery in my room.  So...no, your room isn’t too bright.

In web meetings your eyes need to stay focused just below the camera, not on the screen.  Have a hard time with eye contact? Now is your time to shine.  Do NOT look at people unless you are trying to read expressions, look just below your webcam while presenting, this will keep people’s attention and make them feel like you are talking to them.

Follow these basic rules and when you interact with people you will stand out. If you are bidding for new clients you will look amazing and they will want this professional to be on their team.  The right basic setup will differentiate you from everyone else. All for less than the cost of a new outfit.

5 Reasons You Lose Deals to Your Competitors

Are you struggling to sell Managed Services?

If you are struggling to sell services, don't worry, you are not alone. MSPs of all sizes are feeling the pinch when it comes to sales, so this struggle is not exclusive to you. 

Factors such as increases in competition, frugal clients, poor product positioning, diminishing referrals and lack of overall strategy, cumulatively contribute to a continual decline in sales.

Leads are at an all time low and the cost of generating leads is at an all time high. In light of this, it is more important than ever to utilize ways to set yourself apart from the crowd, secure your role as an industry expert and thus, gain credibility from existing and future clients.

With referrals being fewer, and certainly further in between, it is increasingly harder to grow your business with any sort of consistency. And, SMBs are bombarded with sales and marketing messages from IT companies every day, making it increasingly difficult for you to land meetings with qualified companies.

This makes it imperative that you find a way to stand out from the competition and find a way to convert leads into clients. If you look like the current IT provider or, just like every other MSP out there, with similar service offerings, you are virtually giving the prospect a reason to buy on price. 

If you want to put an end to the dreaded ‘Lead-Proposal-Closed Lost’ cycle you will need to become more effective at creating the vision of a higher value experience and demonstrate you have the ability to deliver that experience.

Does this sound like you?

"We'll be just fine once we find a way to get in front of more prospects." While this sounds logical, nothing could be further from the truth. Even referrals do not have the high close ratios which we came to expect for so long. And, leads generated by your own efforts are much more skeptical, with the industry average close ratio well below 30%. Because of this you must have a strategy and a process that sets you up for success.

DIFFERENTIATE YOURSELF FROM YOUR COMPETITION AND

BECOME SALES READY IN 30 DAYS

Make Your MSP Blog a IT Sales Tool

Okay, you just exchanged business cards with the owner of an accounting firm during a chamber event. 

He said, “Sure, let’s plan on meeting some time over the next 2 weeks.”

Awesome! You left the event with a qualified lead! Plus, he agreed to meet and he already shook your hand. 

The problem, because we all know it’s never that easy, is that there’s a delay. You couldn’t ask him much of anything, and nevermind describing what makes your MSP unique.

There’s no set date for the appointment, and who knows, he may bump into a competitor or research online in the next 10 days!

So, what do we do now?

You need to activate the EPSA campaign

EPSA is an acronym for education, professionalism, story-telling and authenticity, and together, these are the qualities you want your prospect to understand, because if they grasp what makes you and your company unique, your chances of winning will go up.

The full implementation of EPSA is what I’ll cover in the seminar, but for this blog, I’ll share just two examples of how MSPs are doing the “E for education” part of the EPSA methodology.

E is for Education

Let’s get back to the story above.

The CEO of that accounting firm may have asked you a question about security, or maybe they told you they were using O365 but not getting much out of it, or perhaps he didn’t say a thing aside from “we need help with IT.”

The goal with the E part, or “education,” is to teach your qualified opportunity two things. First, to teach him something he didn’t know, and second, to show him that your company is a thought-leader.

Example by NSI

NSI is an MSP in Naugatuck, CT, that my agency helps with sales and marketing. A blog called, “In the Trenches of a Real Breach” is an audio interview we did with Tom McDonald, the CEO, about some ransomware attacks. It goes into what a SOC is and the importance of having an incident response plan. By having Tom’s voice and real story, we are showing his unique expertise.

Example by Casserly Consulting

Casserly Consulting is an MSP in Boston. A blog called, “The State of Cyber Security in the Commonwealth” we took the publicly available breach data from Mass.gov and we analyzed it. By doing a deep dive into the nature of breaches in Massachusetts, we’re making Peter’s MSP a thought-leader.

Why MSPs are not closing business enough

You pro­vide a great ser­vice, the price is right, your mar­ket­ing cam­paign is spot-on, yet very few deals are actu­ally clos­ing? Does this sound like your com­pany? Sadly, a good offer often times isn’t enough to win a client over. Some­times a lower level com­peti­tor gets the busi­ness. Why? Bet­ter sales tech­niques. In order to go from con­tact to con­tract, you need to be one step ahead of your com­peti­tors, espe­cially as it relates to sales processes and tech­niques. Fol­low­ing are some help­ful tips that will help you close the sale faster – and eas­ier – than ever:

Differentiate yourself from your competition and become sales ready in 30 days

Cre­ate a fool proof meet­ing agenda

As a rule of thumb, busi­ness meet­ings with your prospects must be as effi­cient as pos­si­ble. Not only does that help you present your­self as a pro­fes­sional, but it also sig­nif­i­cantly reduces the time it takes to close the sale. On the other hand, a dis­or­ga­nized meet­ing sends a very pow­er­ful mes­sage that you are not prop­erly pre­pared. To make sure you’re show­ing off your com­pany in the best way pos­si­ble, have the meet­ing planned out from start to end, leav­ing noth­ing to chance.

Go over the impor­tant stuff early in the process

Per­haps one of the worst moments in a sales job is when after months of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, you sud­denly real­ize that you’re just not the right fit for the deal. As a result, you never close the sale, and all the time and resources you’ve spent go down the drain. To pre­vent this from hap­pen­ing to you, ask the impor­tant ques­tions early in the process. This will ensure that you’re not wast­ing your time on a client that will never actu­ally close the sale.

Pro­vide more than is expected from you

After you’ve gained the ini­tial inter­est from a poten­tial client, you need to cre­ate a good image – and fast. A pop­u­lar sales tech­nique involves going beyond the expected, and sur­pris­ing the client in a good way. The ways of achiev­ing this range from free gifts and tokens of appre­ci­a­tion to infor­ma­tive emails that could in some way help the client in their busi­ness. All of this will attract their atten­tion, and make you more appeal­ing than the competitors.

Go beyond a “yes”

In many cases when try­ing to close a sale, you will get a ver­bal agree­ment, while the actual con­tract never gets signed. It’s impor­tant to make the phase between ver­bal and writ­ten agree­ment as short as pos­si­ble. The longer your prospect stalls, the higher are the chances they’ll change their minds or find one of your com­peti­tors to be more suited for their needs. Let your poten­tial clients know that you are seri­ous about the deal, and that you expect the same from them.

To actu­ally close the sale, you have to be atten­tive and meet the client’s needs. Using the sales tech­niques out­lined above might be just the thing that “clicks” and makes your next prospect choose you over your com­peti­tors. In order to improve your chances of clos­ing each deal, make sure you man­age each and every deal per your stages in your sales cycle. This cru­cial step will min­i­mize the time spent on bad deals and shorten your sale scy­cle on qual­i­fied deals.

Need more help? Let the team show you how to win more deals via bet­ter meet­ings and stronger qual­i­fy­ing techniques.

Start vCIO with Quick Productized Projects

Starting vCIO services can be a struggle not just for you and your people, but for the clients too. There are some established expectations of vCIO services, which sets a hurdle right at their kickoff of these services. There is, however, a natural way of solving this problem: use easy to sell and easy to deliver productized vCIO projects.

Of course, developing such effective and elegant solutions does take time, so we’ve set up a shortcut to start, and let you build up vCIO Project products instead. Don’t worry - this isn’t taking on new work - just solve problems you’re expected to already, but start getting paid for all you do.

Let's see seven examples of typical vCIO products:

1. IT Development Roadmap ($1500 - $4500) to build up a general IT roadmap, focusing on infrastructure while addressing typical business problems and recommending applications, security or compliance themes as well.
2. IT Budget ($500 - $2500) to develop an IT Budget in detail. If the scope is limited to the infrastructure services/investments, SaaS subscriptions and software licenses, it’s a cookie-cutter and helps you sell additional services like regular budget checks.
3. Application Selection ($500 - $1500) to select a typical SaaS based application they can buy online without any sales reps involved, such as a CRM, Project Management or any other light line of business application package. You help them set up the requirements, pre-select the candidates and facilitate the selection process.
4. SaaS Audit ($500 - $1500) to audit all SaaS subscriptions they have and check whether they have the optimal package, exhibit alternatives and integrations available. They do the heavy lifting and you coordinate the process.
5. Risk Assessment ($1500 - $5000) can be boring, to be blunt, but there is no better way to kick-off some IT security initiatives, open the discussion on compliance, or just assess IT risks beyond the scope of just their infrastructure.
6. Productivity Workshops ($1500 - $3000) aren’t only useful to office workers, but anyone using to-do apps, project management tools, Office 365, note-taking apps, chat and email apps on various devices. Put together a curriculum you can go through onsite or online with the managers/power users to help them leverage technology better.
7. Virtual IT Department Evaluation ($500 - $1500) deals with the many vendor, software and SaaS providers who constitute your clients’ virtual IT department. You can safely assume nobody is leading that herd. Evaluating the different parties involved, set responsibilities and required service levels and manage them accordingly to assure they get the most out of their vendors and services.

These are just quick tips, but how do you make them productized?

1. Write down the target customer and the scope of the project.
2. Write down the project deliverables as task lists and tasks to be able to establish the price.
3. Put together a one-pager on the problems it solves and the benefits it delivers and print out 20-30 pieces, as well as a promotional email.
4. Start promoting it with a discount to batch more projects into a given month so you can be more efficient.
5. Wait and watch while these initial projects start to push you towards a stand-alone vCIO service.

3 Best IT reports for MSPs looking to better communicate with clients

Having been inspired by the business model canvas, we started our own IT Management Canvas almost three years ago. We’re thrilled to see how creatively people adopt the canvas with the related questionnaire and instigate vibrant client engagement. Through our development of vCIO and IT Security related assessments, the new canvases have been born. Let's check out the revision of the original IT management Canvas, the IT Security Canvas and the vCIO Canvas.

Upsell your clients with strategic QBRs and IT strategy meetings

IT Management Canvas

The 7C canvas is our original IT Management Canvas, developed to display and investigate the entire performance of a client’s IT, rather than just the traditional infrastructure. It elevates the conversation from the nuts and bolts to the business context of their IT, creates an IT Development Roadmaps, and enables development of business-minded IT strategies.

The original ITCq questionnaire can help the Account Manager, Virtual CIO or sales executive to assess a client's maturity. This is then used for traditional audits, maintaining internal compliance and in the continuous effort to make their IT more business focused.

The main strength of the canvas lies in its ability to make a client’s IT more relevant and facilitate a conversation around the current state of their system and opportunities they could exploit. It helps get aligned on the mission with your clients, differentiate your company when meeting your prospects, and generally enhance engagements.

Analysis of the ITCq will direct problems to services like general IT support, managed firewall, Office 365, virtualization, vCIO, Application Management and other IT related services.

Download the canvas in a PDF format

IT Security Canvas

For many MSPs the natural progression is toward Managed IT Security focus. The challenge involved here is to find the balance between the very high-level services like compliance, documentation, audits, training, and the low-level intrusion detection, risk management and a vast array of other technical details.

The IT Security Canvas and the NIST Cyber Security Assessment create this balance, including Human Resources Management, Access Control, Service Control, Risk Management, Network Protection, End Point Protection and Policy and Compliance as main aspects of concern.

We created a questionnaire to assess and score the client's IT Security, and score the seven security dimensions together. It works the same - you put a widget on your website and clients and prospects can click to complete the questionnaire, and you get their scores.

By nature IT security is a complex issue, and thus difficult to disseminate to the untrained masses - your clients.  Again the canvas is a big help to exhibit for the client in one page all the main aspects of their IT security. It dramatically assists in understanding this broad subject.

It also directs problems and missing pieces to IT Security services, such as IT Compliance, Risk Management, Intrusion detection, Managed Email Security, Managed Desktop Security and so on, mixed with consultative and technical services.

Download the Canvas in PDF format

vCIO Canvas

In the case of handling the traditional Account Management (or as we call it, vCIO Light) services, the 7C IT Management Canvas is more than enough. The more sophisticated stand-alone vCIO packages ranging from $1.500 MRR to $6.000 MRR, however, need more support. We created a separate questionnaire for assessing their IT management maturity and a Canvas to handle the elements visually.

We make the IT Management and Leadership visual through the building blocks. IT Vision, IT Readiness, IT Project Management, IT Leadership, IT Governance, IT Plan and IT Execution are the main elements of this Canvas.

The focus here is on the comprehensive management of IT. When you find a gap, a misunderstanding or other issue, usually one of the vCIO services will be the solution, such as budgeting, vendor management, or solution selection.

Again the same purpose applies: the questionnaire helps us gauge their maturity and identify their problems, and directs them to specific services.

Download the vCIO Canvas in PDF format

Conclusion

The common challenge in all these approaches is getting across the idea of how much needs to be taken care of, the myriad benefits and critical risks of such a technical subject, usually not well understood by the client. If we don’t start with a platform of engagement and education we’ll miss the chance to help them. We are the ones in the know, so we must be the ones who get the message out.

Your success depends on proper understanding and communication with your clients and prospects.

Terrible buying process for Managed Services

People are talking about MSP sales processes when it comes to discussion of new client acquisition. I believe we should see the process from the customer's perspective and realize that the buying process for them is terrible. Given the current typical buying process, a working future strategic relationship is becoming less and less likely. Let's take a look why the process is broken and see if we can figure a fix.

There are three major underlying issues causing this trouble:

1. Unknown criteria of the decision
2. Vague decision making processes
3. No compelling differentiation among choices

Differentiate yourself from your competition

and become sales ready in 30 days

Issue 1. Would you buy a car for your spouse through an RFP?

A request for proposal (RFP) is a solicitation, often made through a bidding process, by an agency or company interested in procurement of a commodity, service or valuable asset, to potential suppliers to submit business proposals. (Wikipedia)

RFPs are useful tools for firms who can precisely define a request, the services involved, that is innovative and isn’t yet mainstream. Some, however, are just fishing, and end up selecting by price. They don’t know how to make the best decision on the provider, so it comes down at the cost.

The problem for us of course is that if they’re not looking at the other (non-price) properties of the decision, we’ll have a hard time to winning the deal at a rate that will let us provide excellent service.

RFP does not permit the two parties to get to know each other, which hinders the ability to align on a strategic relationship which will lead to the maximized value creation.

Quickfix 1. Actively define the criteria of the decision

If we’re able to precisely nail down the criteria of a decision, our job would be easy. Unfortunately like the car choice for our spouse, most decision making is not logical but emotional, and the criteria seem to be endless. A car can be sold or left in the lot based on its colour alone, or entirely on its reported performance in crash tests.
Our truly superior approach, that actually does help our clients streamline, isn’t getting the chance. We have to use an emotional metric to sway an emotional decision - that you are the genius of technology and have the relevant attributes and skills to assuage any doubts they made the right choice - even at double the price.

We’ve been using the ITCq - IT Competitiveness Quotient to measure how competitive a client is with their technology. These have 56-165 criteria respecting customer size, all logically related to long-term success through better adoption of technology, but at the end of the day when they have a score like 35 out of 100, there will be an emotional aspect to the decision. This is something that needs attention... and we know how to make it better, and can show measurable results.

Issue 2. Would you teach a farmer how to sell potato?

Prospects will always try to second guess the pros on how to buy Managed Services Provider services. They don’t want to be involved in the discovery process (just gimme a price), want shorter meetings (I’m busy), try not to make business decisions on IT (moving to the cloud is a technical issue) and so on.

Every client is different - their circumstances, legacy systems, people, management maturity and so on. For an Managed Services Provider to be in a position to offer anything substantial takes time. The client may see this as a sign you’re not moving forward.

If they don’t see any specific process of engagement they start trying to control the situation and sidetrack you even with a process in your mind.

Quickfix 1. Show them your process and stick to it.

One awesome member showed me a laminated card the other day. It showed a process of how to create an excellent IT Service provider relationship in 7 steps.

It started with a first meeting to check the potential fit. Then it went to an IT Strategy discovery workshop (used the ITCq process) to understand the business related problems and how the IT needs to align with it. Then it moved to data gathering on systems, documentation and infrastructure followed by a technical audit. The next step was the first instance of any talk about price and a contract.

Visible steps were required for a great relationship and none of them was redundant. Our member showed their client that this is how it works. The Managed Service Provider was able to drive and lead the process.

Again the process was visual on a laminated card...I wish I could share it...drop me an email and I’ll get you in contact with the author.

Issue 3. Are you selling a freaking winter tire?

When looking for commodities, there’s a few criteria, and there’s price. But MSP isn’t a winter tire, is it. You need to make the distinction.

Before you go relying on your track record of fast and professional service, consider this: everybody makes the same claim.

Quickfix 3. Eliminate competition with consultative approach

One: let the client be understood. We have to understand their priorities, realities, goals, personality and then only then can we differentiate ourself.

Two: let the client find out what makes us different rather than telling them yourself. Let them make the decision unconsciously that we are the right fit for them.

Both of these are a natural result of a perfectly conducted consultative sales process. This process focuses on probing questions, listening, summarizing the findings, and expressing the solution and the results.

Probing questions on typical pain points (again an example for that is an IT Competitiveness Quotient questionnaire and report) gives you the talking points to explore the different IT related opportunities and dig deeper only where needed. The questions help drive the conversation and will tell way more about you, your company and your thinking than you can get across by yourself.

After getting deep, summarize the issue and get an understanding about priority. Hint to a solution with a client story to give them the confidence that you’re on the top of the game.

As the process unfolds we cover all their pain points, and differentiate ourselves. They’re confident we’ve already solved these problems (priorities for them) and are a great partner to consult.

Conclusion:

We can blame our clients, the markets or the competition because we are facing price pressure and commoditization, or we can embark on many proactive solutions. Let's apply these three quick fixes and rock your next sales meeting.