Keeping Sales Personnel Informed Regarding MSP Sales Transitions

MSP sales strategies must necessarily shift. Technology changes, markets come and go, mergers whom you focus on may differ year to year. Sellers need to know when you’re changing focus, why, how you plan to do it, and what this means to them over the course of regular operations. People don’t like change; keeping employees apprised of coming shifts is wise in helping diminish transition difficulties.

What to Do to Maintain Staff Awareness

There are many different things you’ll want to do to keep staff apprised of operational shifts. Several common “pillars” of proper communication include the following:

Facilitate Greatest Reasonable Transparency

MSP sales departments will have information that it isn’t appropriate for staff to have unless they’re at a certain level of the company. Detailed financial records can be a prime example of this.

However, where you can be transparent, you should be transparent. Let sellers know where you’re moving, why, and what you expect of them. When they understand where changes are coming from, the chore of shifting behavior is less difficult and you’ll likely get results quicker.

Keep Careful Metrics As Regards Outcomes

When you’re making a big shift, you must measure how effective the change is proceeding. This will help you determine where sellers have received the full import of your communication regarding the change, and where they need a little additional help. You can more effectively keep everyone on the same page with the right metrics.

Listen to Employee Feedback

Employees sometimes understand selling intricacies invisible to management. When they’ve got feedback on changes, listen. Listening doesn’t require agreeing with them, but it can make them more comfortable and help them get on board with you. It may even reveal a thing or two.

Alignment with Objectives

When MSP sales personnel are heard, they feel valued. When you measure change, you can keep everyone aligned. Being transparent enables both of these tactics. Together, these three “pillars” of sales changes should help with necessary transitions.

MSP sales take time. There’s a lot of work involved even in those which are successful. Proper preparation is necessary and helps you reach your goals. Following are tips to help you hit the numbers you need:  

Ensure You’ve Got the Tools to Succeed; Consider Professional Support 

MSP sales need to be supported in terms of resources, budget, and data. You need to reach the right number of prospective clients. An appropriate level of the demographics you reach needs to convert, and such conversion needs to be sustainable over the long term. 

Finding your “stride” requires trimming the fat from operation and optimizing outreach strategically. Working with professional agencies which have helped businesses similar to yours calibrate marketing makes a lot of sense, especially in terms of SEO. 

Know Where You’re At to Inform Where You Need to Be 

If you don’t know where you are, you won’t know how far it is to your destination; in fact, you’ll be unable to find a destination. Take stock of present sales metrics, and determine if they’re trending positively or negatively. Get in the habit of keeping close numbers so you can identify when outreach tactics work and when they do not.  

Funneled Leads Fuel Sales: Metrics Help You Proceed  

Sales funnels for MSPs can take a long time and must be carefully managed to convert leads into clients. Leads are the fuel of your marketing machine. You need as many qualified, high-scoring leads as you can get. Metric evaluation of outreach helps you streamline the focus of marketing such that it becomes more successful.  

Hitting Goals 

Remember: you should carefully manage sales funnels, work to acquire continuous lead “fuel”, keep careful metrics, determine present conditions, enable marketers with the right tools, and consider professional support. Such MSP sales tactics will help you designate and reach your goals.  

MSP sales require some sort of negotiation. Even a “lap sale”, as the expression goes, where a client contacts your business intent on buying requires some negotiation. You’ve got to determine what packages fit the client best.

You want as many meetings with clients as possible, and you want a team prepared for them. Following are tips to help you both acquire more sales meetings and be more successful when conducting them:

Design a Prospect Database 

Your MSP sales team needs to maximize all available data. Get all existing clients, leads, and prospects (that is: better than normal leads) organized using an effective database. Customer resource management (CRM) software can be ideal here. Certain SEO agencies specializing in MSP provisions can help you find the best solution.

Don’t Neglect Cold Calling, But Do Some Real Research Beforehand

Cold calling does have a statistical level of effectiveness, believe it or not. Sure, it’s only 2%; but if you do your research and only call demographic matches who will justify the cost of so many calls, you’ll likely net an appropriate conversion.

Don’t Forget Statistics, Drop Facts, and Hit Them with Names

Sales is a numbers game. A 2% conversion rate may seem small unless the value of one conversion is 100 times the cost to acquire it; in which case 2% is fine. If you know the numbers to your particular MSP’s operational costs and client conversions, you can simultaneously avoid discouragement and increase outreach effectiveness.

Other good tactics include brandishing a bevy of pertinent facts and negotiation through reputation. You inform prospects of top-tier endorsements from known “names” or especially remarkable testimonials from satisfied customers.

Conversion and Negotiation

MSP sales informed by numbers, fact-rich, replete with effective name-dropping, properly utilizing cold-call technique, and tracking all outreach in a database will be better enabled for reliable conversion. Such tactics can also be helpful in facilitating sales negotiation.

MSP sales are trickier than most because they involve increased cost. A high-priced automobile might be $40k. By contrast, $5k of MSP service per month comes to $60k in a year. In five years, that’s $300k. Even at an additional $10k a year in expenses, the high-priced vehicle is at just over a third of that. 

Businesses are, accordingly, going to be careful when acquiring tech solutions. Sometimes, they’ll do everything but convert with you, because the budget isn’t there yet. A failed conversion may not necessarily mean your time with a client has elapsed. Following are several ways to respond to sales meetings that don’t result in sales immediately: 

Look at Existing Strategies to “Smoke Out” Weak Links 

MSP sales efforts will sometimes fail. Look at the “chain” of your sales strategy to find where “weak links” are, and eliminate them. Sometimes you didn’t do your homework on the client enough, sometimes there was nothing you could have done. Retroactively examining outreach is essential to determine effectiveness. 

Establish Data Points Determining Better Opportunities 

Find what worked and what didn’t, and appropriately emphasize or discontinue strategy. Even a successful sale will yield an opportunity for improvement, but you’re more likely to find actionable data points from a failed effort. Think of it as a silver lining, and ensure you “cash in” on that silver by collecting and applying said data. 

Don’t Give Up Immediately–The MSP Sales Journey Is Long 

Sometimes a client is just feeling you out to make a future purpose. Keep following up with them for a few months (or even a year or two) after the fact. They may want your services but not be authorized or able to convert immediately. 

Learning from Failure 

You’ll likely learn less from successful conversion than failed attempts. Approach non-conversion as an opportunity to increase the effectiveness of your MSP sales strategy. 

MSP sales professionals must keep themselves cutting-edge in terms of outreach strategies, but that doesn’t mean neglecting tried-and-true methods that work. Sometimes, a real conversation on a phone can be more effective than even the most personalized email–if that conversation is meaningful and properly conducted. These factors can help you optimize each telephone interaction you have when following up with clientele: 

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MSP sales pitches should not be foisted on every potential customer who walks through your MSP’s doors. The sales pitch should be well considered and presented with information attuned to your target. 

Pitching to everybody is firing shotgun rounds in the dark. You might hit something, but you’ll probably just waste ammunition. Following, tips will be explored to help you determine the best time to pitch:  

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MSP sales strategies won’t be successful no matter how in-depth or well-informed if they overstress outreach teams. Like horses in battle or ships on the sea, there are times when they must rest. Horses need sleep and food, naval ships need time in-harbor for repair and fuel. Meanwhile, MSP professionals selling your IT services need to be managed such that they aren’t being stretched too thin. This will increase their effectiveness and your operational sustainability over time. Several strategies to help induce such outcomes include: 

Cut the Fat from Selling Protocols 

MSP sales should be informed by a strategic approach that excises anything unnecessary. If you’ve got some call flow with a bunch of counter-intuitive asks and promotions, get rid of it. Unless you’re some international conglomerate whose name is synonymous with IT service, you’re shooting yourself in the foot. 

You want the shortest distance between the client’s initial interest and their conversion. Figure out what is fundamentally necessary, and cut everything else out. You want metrics to make the proper choices here, working with SEO agencies which specialize in MSPs can give you a real edge through helping you identify and utilize relevant data. 

Messages Calibrated for Specific Targets 

The more specific your aim, the more precise your outreach ballistics will be. A shotgun fires a hundred BBs at a nearby target, but it’s bad for the livestock sprinting in the distance. Sometimes marketing tactics at a convention are different than those on the web. Use data to design any outreach, digital, physical, or through snail mail such that it is most likely to resonate with target clientele.  

Establishing Lead-Ranking Infrastructure 

Don’t send your sellers down blind alleys. Tier outreach protocols such that better leads get priority, and you’ll keep salespeople more energized as they acquire conversions. 

Stronger Sellers 

MSP sales techniques that trim the fat, calibrate outreach, and rank leads will give sellers a better chance at success. Consider existing protocols and optimize as it’s appropriate.  

MSP sales are going to be more successful if you plan them out beforehand— almost anything will be. Like so much in life, such forethought is easier to conceive than it is to enact. 

Following are a few tips to help you most successfully plan out interactions with prospects, ideally leading to an increase in your conversion metrics: 

Establish an Effective Value Proposition 

MSP sales techniques should be built around a value proposition which objectively provides the majority of prospects in your target market with tangible value. 

Now that value can be in terms of increased revenue over time, decreased processing hassle, or better public image— in short, it can be from a number of diverse angles. The key to a successful value proposition is one which emphasizes that which you can do better than the competition.  

Understand Who Makes the Calls from the Start 

With a clear value proposition, your next step is to avoid pitching unnecessarily. You want your proposition to go to the person who has the authority to induct your services. 

You don’t want to give a proposition to a secretary to abbreviate for her boss; her shorthand likely won’t communicate the value you intend. Know who makes the decisions and how, and angle your value proposition accordingly.  

Banish Desperation; Advise, Understand, and Challenge Prospects Instead 

Don’t be desperate. Desperation equates to inexperience in the eyes of many clients. You’re a trusted adviser— think of yourself this way. Your role is to challenge prospects and understand them from within and without well enough to know what will challenge them, and whether such challenges will yield value. 

MSP sales strategies that aren’t desperate, but advise, challenge, and understand clients, are apt to be more effective. Additionally, ensure you’ve got an airtight value proposition and that you present that proposition to the right person among your prospect’s ranks. 

MSP sales have enough of an uphill battle without poor internal practices. Following are three things MSPs often do which reduce their effectiveness in terms of sales and how to avoid them:

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Your MSP sales strategy needs to cut off all the fat. There are a lot of things which may be unnecessary, and there are likely actions you’ve neglected to take that you should. A good way to ensure you’re always at your best is to design outreach operations with built-in productivity strategies. Consider this threefold approach:

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