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.

Monetize Microsoft 365 Cloud Services

On this interview Rich Anderson (Imagine IT) and Adam Walter (Virtual C) talk about leveraging Microsoft 365 for business discussions, differentiation and as a platform for growth.

Rich Anderson has been successfully validating the opportunities behind Microsoft 365 discovery processes and cloud services. Adam has built a remarkable audit process for turning productivity issues into projects.

Check out the chat if you're interested in these innovations:

• Imagine IT used Microsoft 365 IT Audits as door openers where a traditional MSP pitch did not work
• monetize Microsoft 365 related deployment, education and adoption services
  expand business discussions and services beyond the owners and make it a scalable process
• take control of personal, team and business productivity for your clients
• design projects and services that harvest the low hanging fruit with your clients and prospects
• position yourself as a business partner and differentiate your offering from your competition
• get your clients up to speed by proactively using Microsoft 365 products with them

Click on the image to see the complete report

Related Solution Sets

There are three different versions of Solution Sets available for helping you to monetize Microsoft 365 cloud services.

• If you're comfortable doing this on your own, the projects and report templates are available here
• Looking for a bit of guidance on getting this off the ground quickly? This includes 4 hours of 1 on 1 coaching. Pretty much your recipe for quick success!
• Want some help customizing the templates and report? This includes 3 months of guided implementation, coaching and accountability. You cannot fail! 

How Slack app can be a revenue generator for your MSP

Last week we went through how we can stop giving out free advice and making consultation a revenue generator. Let’s see that in practice. Our example today is Slack app, the latest silicon valley unicorn (1B+ valuation). Slack, in most cases, is a free tool designed to enhance your internal communication. So how can we as cloud service providers deliver value and earn revenue with this great tool.

Customer Segment Profile

First, we need to understand a problem most of our clients have. The sector of the industry we’re focusing on now is companies whose teams work together on processes, projects, and collaborating with both vendors and clients.

Jobs to be done: Like so many other aspects of modern life, most of them need to deliver more value with fewer resources.

Pains: Typically they communicate over email, getting 100 or more emails a day, without a clue as to how to handle this volume. They cc each other excessively just to keep everyone in the loop, and use a host of applications like Project Management, CRM, plus service automation, and so on. Even these are mostly cloud based, with no integration, so every one of these systems needs to be checked separately if they want the whole picture.

They’ll also try out new apps on a weekly basis in their search for solutions, install a few, run the 30 day trial, all while not having the time to properly evaluate them - and like Sisyphus’ rock they keep finding themselves at the bottom of the hill again.

Gains they are looking for: They want an overall improvement in their communication each other, vendors, and clients, so they can focus on their work instead of emails, and would love to get answers, reasonably quickly, from a system, application, or from each other regardless of location - in the car, office or at home.

But they’re already too busy...the last thing they need is the added task of creating this solution. What’s missing is someone to listen to their issues, understand them, figure a solution, and then not only implement it, but also train their people and support them in the learning curve so that they can get back to the business of their business.

We’ve observed that this is quite typical. even though we know the tools are out there...they just don’t get used or aren’t implemented and trained properly. That’s nothing new to us in IT: Owning tools is easy...finding the right one and using it properly is another matter.

Value Proposition Map

Discover how Slack with the proper consultation and implementation can help them achieve this communication improvement.

Gain Creators: As a product Slack helps teams communicate within a single space. This can happen in private channels, one to one communication, public channels, you name it, and it can manage topics according to need. It also integrates with thousands of applications, and so ususally gets the sought after information from disparate sources without logging into those applications. In essence it creates a unified platform for company-wide communication and replaces internal emails almost completely.

The tool is the first step. Also required however is the creation of the business case, context, and the process to properly implement it, training users, creating basic policies and enrolling the entire team and the company overall. Of course we could leave them to do all this on their own, but our value proposition is to make this process successful from the get-go. This is actually more important than the tool itself.

Pain Relievers: Teams are now working in all kinds of venues and access the information from a myriad of devices, anytime, and anywhere. They always have to share files and documents with each other. Even with cloud based file sharing it’s a time wasting task - to copy / paste the links, then use another app to send. Another problem is after sharing, nobody’s aligned on where the file came from, and have to re-check the email to access it again. Slack eliminates this speed-bump entirely, leaving the file in context, and with its robust search engine, one can find it easily with any other system of communication.

Still, most users will have questions, and Slack doesn’t have real one-on-one support that incorporates an understanding of their business context...it’s rather more general help on features. Our support can fill this gap. We’ll often be able to offer our technical skills in integrating many other applications into Slack - a not so obvious task. We can be the ones to make those integrations work and enhance them over time.

Product & Services

The ultimate solution for the opportunities / problems of the client is a Slack Implementation Project.

• Needs assessment
• Project kickoff
• Implementation
• Project management
• Training
• Documentation

Because this implementation project is largely common among all who would have it, it can be templated easily, so from our perspective is streamlined. A Slack implementation project in this sense with initial consultation, implementation, technical set up, training and initial support can fall into a $2500 - $3500 range. It leads to an additional MRR for support and subsequent enhancement projects.

Marketing/Sales

The best way to market this is with an eBook or a Grader. You can see an example of a Slack grader here. It asks the following questions from the client:

We can quickly score their answers and see whether Slack can be useful to them to show, try, and implement. It can lead us to a quick product tour and a kickoff meeting for the needs assessment.

Delivery

The delivery part is a canned project with

• Project Plan
• Process descriptions, hints and tips
• Pricing and packaging document, contract, agreement
• Task lists for the milestones
• Tasks for the necessary deliverables
• Meeting memos, agendas to manage the project efficiently
• One-page checklists for the discovery meetings
• Presentation decks for education/training
• Basecamp.com live client facing workspace with everything necessary to facilitate smooth communication with the client

Conclusion

Slack is a great tool, and boosting the tool with our implementation services is a big hit. Clients will understand that we’re no longer just a general infrastructure service provider but a real business ‘wingman’ or ‘wingwoman’ for them with respect to the creative use and implementation of technology solutions. It ushers us into the trusted advisory role and helps us reframe our clients to see that IT is not just cost-savings, but a huge competitive advantage.

The Fall of the Era of Free IT Advice

Many IT managed services providers (MSPs) and internet telephony service providers (ITPs) are suffering the challenges of charging for IT consultation. The IT industry has taught its customers that we sell big expensive boxed packages that come with free consultation, placing the value in the big boxes and none in the advice. There are no big expensive boxes anymore, but still the advice remains free. However a systemic shift is taking shape finally reversing this conundrum. It is about offering low-cost SaaS applications and solutions with high-grade consultation fees, placing more value in the advice rather than the tool.

Generate client engagement with five quarterly business reviews in 30 days

What has happened?

Let's go back over what happened. We sold expensive systems to SMBs such as MS Exchange with servers. The process of selling these projects included high-level consultation: checking the environment, creating architectural designs, and putting together migration plans well before we got the deal signed. Part of the sales process was to create a complete Project Plan (many unbilled hours) for the investment, deployment, and implementation of those items. Because everybody made a decent margin on those package items plus the accompanying service project and because the closing rate was high, we were happy to include the initial consultation work in the sales process.

But over the last few years most SMEs have been moving into the cloud to some extent. They are buying Office 365 monthly subscriptions instead of buying servers and exchange licenses paid upfront. We do earn commissions, but is there more? Do we need to plan things out? Do we need to integrate the systems? Do we need to do consulting work? Sure we do, and it’s just going to grow as the system gets more complex.

The fact is that clients never really get used to paying us for IT advice and IT consultation, but now we don’t have those big lucrative projects to cover our work.

Rise of the SaaS applications

The SaaS model is widely misunderstood. Most people think that the main benefit of SaaS was that you don’t have to install the application, making it easier to use. That’ just one of the perks along with all the other technical advantages such as mobility, platform independence, data storage and so on.

The big deal of SaaS is the business model. You might think that this is all about paying monthly instead of buying the license. This is a different and very important aspect. Paying $100/user for a decent CRM for five users is $18,000 for three years. The same with on premise, is you’ll pay the upfront license + 20% upgrades every year. Without the hosting fees it’s around a $12,000 CRM package just to start; we often forget that there are always implementation costs - we’ll get back to that later.

From a psychological point of view, paying $500 per month is a much lower hurdle than committing to a $12.000 upfront fee, if you sign a 12 month contract, which is now less often required. It makes SaaS applications selling easier.

From the perspective of the application developer however, this is a whole new game. Now the application company does not get $12,000 for the license upfront, and risks losing the client at any time. The app developer has a bunch of upfront costs developing the tool, and then more selling it. You (believe it or not), marketing, and sales and customer management can quickly eat up 50% of the lifetime value of the client. That means the motivation for the application developer is no longer just to sell the tool, but to acquire and keep the client as long as possible, and to upgrade to the highest package possible.

Now the goals of customer and the application developer are aligned: get as much value out of the application as possible. The big deal of SaaS is common motivation.

Distribution of work with SaaS

The second big shift very few people yet see clearly is the change in work distribution. Providing a $500 CRM service for five users is a pretty lean operation. This equals 3-4 hours of consultation rate, so the SaaS provider has no financial support to do the work for the client. The client has to do it for themselves.

Take a look at Hubspot. Hubspot is an inbound marketing application. It helps you put together a decent website, blog, email workflows, calls to action and to run a great web based system.

They have to educate their customers on inbound marketing strategies, copywriting, blogging, sharing content, grow-to-hack, choosing the right color for the calls to action - you name it. If they don’t, the customer is not going to build up a decent system, and won’t see the expected successes, benefits, or value, and will eventually drop out.

Hubspot is an extreme example of how much a client needs to put in to make an initiative successful, even with a great starting product.

The best part is the following: most clients have been there, done that and know that IT initiatives are the hardest to manage, and that they require their investment. Buying Hubspot and figuring it out along the way doesn’t work, and the costs of not paying attention are higher.

However most customers don’t have the resources or the people available to learn the best color for the calls to action and how to increase the traffic in the Facebook page. They rely on Hubspot certified partners to do the job. These partners are helping clients implement the tools, and further along the way. They have a huge upfront charge to kick things off as well as additional monthly recurring charges. In most cases the overall payment for the partner far exceeds the payment for Hubspot for the tool itself. 

The paradigm shift: they are paying for the success, not for the advice...

The latest IPO and stellar growth of the Hubspot partner community is proof this is happening.

Put it together

Ok. Let's recap the points:

1. we see that the old model was to sell the big upfront project with free advice, 
2. we see SaaS companies motivation is now 100% aligned with the customers’ success
3. we see clients are willing to pay for success if it is made tangible

What’s the point, you might ask? How do we make money as MSPs, we don’t know Hubspot!?

Many SaaS based applications are more affordable than complex packages and usually solve one problem, such as:

• Project Management tools (Basecamp, Asana, etc.)
• Lightweight CRMs (Zoho, Sugar, etc.)
• Process Management apps (ProcessPlan, ProcessStreet, etc.)
• Collaboration (Slack, Hipchat etc.)
• Meeting Management (Lucid Meeting, Do.com, etc.)
• Integration tools (CloudHQ, Zapier, etc.)
• Vertical based solutions

We can continue this list for a long time. Any ordinary 20+ sized company would need one application at least from the app categories above.

Let's check our SaaS application grader which helps you and your clients understand what part of the business is not leveraged with a lightweight web app:

The problem is still that they don’t have the resources to master these applications; they don’t have the time to choose, learn, implement and integrate. Even though these apps are solving basic problems, understanding the business process and implementing a Trello.com card system for managing it isn’t a trivial effort. Most companies don’t perceive a part of the potential these tools could do for them.

That’s the void; what’s missing. Both the application developer and the customer need this role filled.

How do MSPs make money with that?

A traditional MSP is not going to make a dime with this model. They are infrastructure focused companies, not application focused companies (yet). But they can easily step into this role, because they have the support and the client base, and are already familiar with the applications world.

1. Do not do hourly rates, but fixed scope projects

Selling it for $150 per hour is not going to work. But selling Slack the internal chat tool, putting together the basic processes and rules, with ten channels and five integrations for $2000 and $100 support per month is workable, predictable and drives success. The vCIO is the ideal candidate for those projects. He knows the business, understands the processes and can communicate the need.

2. Oversee the portfolio, not just the individual apps

As you deliver more and more apps to clients, someone has to be the owner of them, or there will arise islands of different types, with no integration and no control. Again the vCIO is ideal for the control of that management role: making decisions on which apps to implement, governance, subscription management, etc.

3. Come from the business world, not the technical

Don’t provide "ProcessPlan" as an app. That is not a value. Provide operational excellence with well defined processes and automation that uses ProcessPlan to deliver value. Again, being a virtual CIO, you are going to easily spot these opportunities and make it happen.

4. Have a platform, a business application solution stack, and vertical focus

For a base IT infrastructure, Office 365 or Google should be among your choices, and for all the typical applications - calendar, note, workflow, project, collaboration etc. - there should be a stack the engineers know can bundled together and integrated. Also be familiar with vertical based stacks for accountants, law firms, professional services, etc.

5. Test it, live it, support it

It’s important to use the same stack internally (you probably already are) so that your team has experience with it. The support will be more “User Enablement”, helping them with hints and tricks, to take away some of the heavy lifting from the vCIO’s shoulder. The Virtual CIO is busy doing the planning and the implementation. Then the team is backed to support it.

There are cases where managed services providers have bundled together a “SaaS Office Suite”, reselling, implementing and supporting many applications per user. In this case it’s an addition to the current MSP package but with licenses, subscriptions and services inside as well.

Our MSP switched to this mode 18 months ago and are now packaging the full SaaS application suite with all desktop support and remote monitoring in one bundle. That is a client experience of value.

Conclusion

Let's shift the paradigm from "Expensive boxes with free advice" to "Cheap applications with paid advice."

This is the fall of the era of free advice and the dawn of the profitable vCIOs!

Transform your MSP sales approach

Branden Baker, President of Integration Technologies from Hawaii is a modern Tom Selleck. He shares a story about the transformation of his IT sales approach.

His team had not been able to close any managed services provider deals for more than a year. But he got involved in the virtual CIO conversation and after only a few weeks he landed his first monster six-figure deal. 

START GROWING WITH MSP SALES RELATED RESOURCES FOR FREE

5 KEYS TO GENERATE, QUALIFY AND CLOSE MORE SALES
Have you ever wondered why you struggle to communicate your values to your prospect, why prospects stay with their current provider even when they’re not happy, you have a hard time closing deals that weren’t referrals, or you just can’t find a way to consistently close sales? This recorded webinar with our MSP sales expert guide, Mark Woldman, will show exactly where you are going wrong and help you develop a plan to move your sales forward. 

CLOSE MORE DEALS WITH A PREDICTABLE AND REPEATABLE MSP SALES PROCESS

Watch this interview with our MSP sales expert guide, Mark Woldman, to win over new prospective clients by finding best practices that will help your MSP become Sales-Ready. Here you’ll learn key concepts and practices that will move your sales forward!

Break Your IT Sales Barriers with Ian Altman

We are starting our "MSP 2.0 bestseller" monthly book review. We want to start strong, so the first book of this series is the new consultative selling holy bible, Same Side Selling. The co-author, Ian Altman, CEO of Grow My Revenue, is a sales visionary, bestselling author, Forbes contributor and keynote speaker.

While speaking with Ian it became clear he knows how to win the hardest battle IT managed services providers have ever faced: commoditization of the IT infrastructure services and the resulting price pressure, shrinking margins, and the lack of differentiation from competition.
One of our MSP 2.0 movement members suggested I read the book: Same Side Selling - A Radical Approach to Break Through Sales Barriers. He had told me that this is 100% aligned what we do in the Managed Services Platform IT Consultative Sales program. I read it and I was flattered. Most of what I’ve read on the subject involves large complex concepts, but this book was very simple, very practical and quite an eye opener. I think everybody who’s a little serious about MSP 2.0 should read his book.

You can read his articles each week on Forbes.com. If you do a search in business trends, he comes up #1. Business luminary Seth Godin recommends Ian’s latest bestselling book, Same Side Selling, as one of two must-read books on consultative sales. Ian is host of the Grow My Revenue Business Cast. He started, sold, and grew his companies worldwide to values of more than one billion dollars. 

I had a chance to chat with Ian last week and he was able to carve out time with us for a quick interview. The fun part is that he knows the industry well, so we had a great chat. I am not going to try summarizing the interview, as I think it’s better to just hear him for yourself.

Thanks again to Ian. Check out his webcasts at his website: http://www.growmyrevenue.com

MSP 2.0 Podcast

We have been producing interviews with MSP Thought Leaders and with our clients for more than a year now. We started this as an ad-hoc practice to usher great MSP 2.0 insights into the community. People seem to be enjoying the free interview format without presentation, special offers and other sales tactics.

Now with over 16 interviews we’ve received a ton of feedback and the message we’re getting most often is to make the content available in a podcast format. Many people like listening to these inspiring talks during their commute, or just in the background.

So we have transferred all videos to a Podcast format and it’s available here. What we started as a fun exercise to get people talking had a great impact. We’ve seen that many people:

• started to work on the execution skills after the interview with Chris Day - IT Glue.
• were inspired by the way Greg Tanner restarted his MSP with virtual CIO.
• got started selling vCIO after Rich Anderson explained the model of transition.
• started to think about the cold calling as a strategic lead generation effort after the inspiring talk from Carrie Simpson.
• started implementing high level services after Colin Knox from Passportal told us stories about his managed services provider's vCIO services
• started to work on Process Management initiatives after a talk with Ryan Williams.

I could go on with examples, but these are the people who inspire, educate and share their thoughts and dilemmas.

That is why we are going to take this to the next level: to get ad-hoc interviews as well as more organized talks with more background information. For example next week I have an interview with a bestselling author about sales transformation, and we’ll share more collaterals, and practical information after the interview.

So stay tuned! In 2016 we will have more great content from more smart people who have compelling things to say and will help to push the MSP 2.0 movement forward!

Closing 11 Virtual CIO contracts in 3 weeks

Greg Tanner from Denver is a maverick, no question about it. His “Technology Quarterback™” slogan has become a meme among the MSP 2.0 community. We spoke the other day and I am still speechless. He started crafting this vCIO offering back in June, piece by piece, and started selling it in early October. Since then he’s closed 11 virtual CIO contracts with over 20K MRR! In this video, Greg shares the secrets to these amazing results. Be aware, he has very strong opinions about MSP 2.0. (Even stronger than me - Haha!)

I shared this video with some of our Members a month ago and received great feedback full of inspiration and praise for his efforts. A big THANK YOU to Greg for sharing his thoughts with us!

Greg’s approach is somewhat disruptive, but very effective. Grab your seats and get ready to take some notes. This is going to be an intense ride!

Delivering Business Focused QBRs

ADAM WALTER AT VIRTUAL C

You would like to be a high-value business partner in your client’s eyes rather than a basic technology service provider. Your QBR process is a critical part of influencing their engagement up to a higher level. Watch this recorded webinar with our vCIO expert guide, Adam Walter, who has shared his 5 step process to make any technical QBR into a business-focused one.

6 Best Practices of Top Performing vCIOs

ADAM WALTER AT VIRTUAL C

Watch this interview with our vCIO expert guide, Adam Walter, to learn how to be more engaged with clients by finding best practices for becoming a trusted business advisor in 6 single steps.

 

Cold calling best practices with Carrie Simpson

Carrie Simpson, Founder and CEO of Managed Sales Pros is the one and only MSP Cold Calling guru- an expert on what drives tangible results. Though we are very much focused on the inbound marketing side of lead generation, we cannot deny the potential performance of cold calling.

I was really interested in her best practices in getting leads over the phone, and surprised by some of the hints and tips Carrie shared with me. She talks on how to overcome call reluctance, how to build a winning script, and how to best manage the time investment.  

Differentiate yourself from your competition and

become sales ready

If you have not done cold calling before, or you think your approach isn’t working, just listen and learn how you can fill your sales pipeline. Mixing the MSP 2.0 message with cold calling can build your revenue funnel faster.

START GROWING WITH MSP SALES RELATED RESOURCES FOR FREE

5 KEYS TO GENERATE, QUALIFY AND CLOSE MORE SALES
Have you ever wondered why you struggle to communicate your values to your prospect, why prospects stay with their current provider even when they’re not happy, you have a hard time closing deals that weren’t referrals, or you just can’t find a way to consistently close sales? This recorded webinar with our MSP sales expert guide, Mark Woldman, will show exactly where you are going wrong and help you develop a plan to move your sales forward.

CLOSE MORE DEALS WITH A PREDICTABLE AND REPEATABLE MSP SALES PROCESS

Watch this interview with our MSP sales expert guide, Mark Woldman, to win over new prospective clients by finding best practices that will help your MSP become Sales-Ready. Here you’ll learn key concepts and practices that will move your sales forward!

5 ways MSPs can leverage Business Model Canvas 

Business Model Canvas has been a very hot management tool recently. Personally I have created 100+ Business Models over the last couple years for clients and for our companies. One of our companies is even a "Use Case" in the Hungarian edition of the Business Model Generation Book. We have developed different ways for IT managed services providers to use the tool for different reasons. Let's take a look at 5 practical ways to leverage this tool.

If you do not know the tool, check it out here: for books, apps, online learning and so on. You can watch a 2 minute introduction here: 

The idea of a Business Model Canvas is visualizing and simplifying complex things. It’s divided into nine key building blocks of the business, and uses sticky-notes to put elements and content on the Canvas. You can visualize an existing business model, brainstorm around it and also develop new business models.

As MSP leaders, vCIOs should have this tool in our toolbox for different types of workshops. The tool is perfect for leading and facilitating a conversation about the client's business, rather than their technology. It helps us be part of a business discussion and cut the tech talk.

Upsell your clients with strategic QBRs and IT strategy meetings

1. Understanding your client’s business

Many IT companies put too much focus on the infrastructure of their clients and neglect the need to understand their businesses. If you have a Quarterly Business Review, let's bring the Canvas and go through their business. The Canvas has many helpful features that ensure you won’t get lost - the worst that can happen is the client rambles on about their business, and trust that you understand them. You can add this little event to the onboarding process as well, so every client has this experience from the first phase.

One of our clients in Louisiana used this tool to meet the CEO. The Internal IT Manager was the gatekeeper and did not want them to contact the management directly. The IT Manager was not able to answer such business-related questions, so The Business Model Canvas provided the chance to go back to the Board Room again and talk to the CEO personally.

2. IT Strategy Meeting

When we create an IT strategy we need a clear understanding of the business context. The Business Model Canvas is a great tool for us and for the client to brainstorm. If for example "Fast Delivery" is one of the client's value propositions, the canvas helps focus on their need for process automation or collaboration tools.  If their priority is to get the clients closer and increase the personal touch, why don’t they use advanced Project Management and CRM tools?

One of our clients in New Jersey has done the Modeling, and the main initiatives of the Business Model Canvas went into the IT strategy directly. Their main focus went to IT, because they felt the virtual CIO was able to manage those initiatives.

3. Discovery Workshop

Of course every MSP is playing the commodity field now. Differentiation is key when we want to land a new client. Starting off with a Business Model Canvas is going to generate confidence in the prospect's mind. No IT company out there is doing such a workshop. They’ll feel they’re making a real business connection while also talking to a tech expert.

One of our clients did that and the client response was: "Geno, you are the first service provider ever who has asked us such questions. Most of them just checked our server room." He landed the deal right there!

4. Business - Technology alignment with the IT Management Canvas

Our consultative sales process has an IT Management Discovery tool called the 7C IT Management Canvas. The shape is the same as the Business Model Canvas, but we have IT management and IT technology related content inside. We use a questionnaire that we complete with the prospect, and score them across several different dimensions. It is 100% compatible with the Business Model Canvas, so we suggest using both for clients of 50 or more people.

The Business Model Canvas feeds the 7C IT Management Canvas, and shows the Business - Technology alignment. It is just a little extra work, but it maps out the company business and technology very clearly. Of course, all the actions we take from here will be both technology and business oriented, and thus every tech-related project will have the business case in mind.

5. Your thinking tool

Most of the time you use the Business Model Canvas to manage your clients' businesses. I strongly suggest playing within your organization as well. Carve out your current model, create alternatives and brainstorm around different models and ideas.

Let's use our previous article as an example as we go through the MSP 1.0 and MSP 2.0 typical business models. Let's use these thoughts as conversation starters with your clients. Get your team together, do a workshop from scratch and ask the questions in the Canvas. You’ll be surprised how much alignment it can achieve.

If you are interested in learning more about how to leverage this tool, check out a demo with one of our Customer Success Managers.