MSP Company Strategies for Customer “Needs and Wants” Qualification

Obviously, what the clients of your MSP company need and what they want aren’t going to be the same. Your clients are naturally going to want much more than you can provide for them. What they need will differ from that. They’ll want everything for nothing, but they’ll need bandwidth X at monthly subscription Y, in conjunction with monitoring and support of one kind or another.

It’s important to identify where there are wants that can be achieved in the near future and where there are unreasonable expectations deriving from misinformation. You need to quantify what baseline needs of your primary clientele are and what their most profitable thresholds will be. Following are a few ways to do this:

Clearly Define and Continuously Research Target Markets

An MSP company needs to know who it’s talking to and where that audience lies. Additionally, you should know when that audience shifts or expands owing to a change in provided services. When you know who you’re talking to, you’ll know what they are likely to want, what they actually need, and how you can split the difference.

Employ SEO, Keywords, and Other Prescient Tactics

Search engine optimization (SEO) can give you statistics which demonstrate the content drawing in the most clientele. You can allude to both wants and needs and see where your audience congregates, adjusting these outreach tactics as it makes sense to.

Communicate Unique Value Propositions Transitioning with New Data

Your MSP has unique qualities positioning it ahead of certain peers or competitors. Use those qualities to facilitate a unique proposition in content. As new data becomes available, incorporate it. Some needs you may not be able to meet yet but will be able to in the future.

Meeting and Exceeding Expectations

When an MSP company quantifies needs against wants, serving needs to fulfillment, and attaining wanted services when feasible, you’ll likely retain clientele and initiate increased conversion both directly, as well as through referral. When your clients are satisfied, they’ll want to tell their peers about what you do.

An MSP company needs to have outreach tactics built around clientele. You don’t want to overwhelm, but at the same time, you don’t want to look down on selling technique. Selling isn’t a bad thing. The word “sales” isn’t a dirty word.

Customer-centered marketing professionals incorporate upselling and cross-selling; they just won’t do so in an over-the-top manner which oppresses clients or leads.

Cross-Selling

An MSP company should differentiate cross-selling from upselling. Cross-selling would be like this: if you were a fast food restaurant selling a burger, and you asked if the buyer wanted fries, you’ve cross-sold an item to them. Basically, cross-selling involves related services or products which better the choice a client has made.

If you’re going to do this in a customer-focused way, you’ll want to only suggest items that will actually provide legitimate value to clients. Some businesses can’t afford what you are offering, so you’ve got to be willing to back down if they decline. However, if you’ve researched your clients well, you can determine what will actually provide them value and truly help them.

Upselling

Upselling is often thought to be obtrusive. Say you’re at a restaurant, and someone comes in and orders a medium-sized entree. Upselling would be convincing them to go with the “large”. In tech, you may want to upsell clients when you know that which they’re planning to purchase won’t serve their needs.

For example, they may be purchasing less cloud space than they’ll need by year’s end or perhaps the tech they’re buying isn’t requisite to the tasks they’ll be using it for. Again, leverage your upsell with true value.

Serving the Client

An MSP company may actually be underserving clients by refraining from cross-selling or upselling. This is especially true when clients are purchasing products or services in ways that don’t reflect their needs. Know your clients and target prospects to understand their true needs, and serve them.

An MSP company can’t rest on local demand. Towns and cities grow, unless the bottom drops out from the local economy. In that scenario, your MSP will have to move, too. Otherwise, even if you’re the only tech solution on the block, another will develop eventually.

If you haven’t made client experience core to what you do, you’re going to lose market share. Conversely, being the “new guy” on the block who provides better service can position you better than big-ticket competitors. Following are a few tips to help you deliver better client experiences:

Learn from Peers and Competitors; Innovate from There, Don’t Copy

Your MSP company is operating in an environment with competitors and peers; learn from them. What works, what doesn’t, and which of these tactics will effectively serve your operation? Once you answer these questions, begin to innovate going forward. Learn from competitors, and do what they do better than them.

Focus on Problem Resolution Rather than “Wowing” Clientele

Astonishing clients certainly has its place, but it’s a lot better to serve their needs directly than to bend over backwards trying to impress them. You know what’s really impressive? Reliable technology service which operates as advertised.

When clients come to you with problems, solve them immediately. When prospects have questions, give them clear, accurate answers that help them build a picture of what value you bring.

Regularly Communicate with Clients: Listen Carefully

Talk to existing and prospective clients. Ask what they like and dislike about what you provide. Prepare questions that will elicit response, and ensure you listen carefully to those responses. Apply things you learn that are appropriate to your model going forward.

Top-Tier Customer Experience

Your MSP company must communicate and listen to clients, focus on problem resolution over impressing clients and innovate from lessons competitors teach, either directly or incidentally. Properly applied tactics like these will improve client experience.

There is a time for your MSP business to provide information as a direct means of converting clients, and a time simply to give them information knowing a sale won’t result. 

Becoming a resource does much to establish your operation as an authority, and in the future, this will lead to sales with most whom you’ve provided consultation services to. 

A good pitch has simplicity, clarity, passion, and practice helping you define these qualities. The same is true in consultation. Where the difference comes is in a concerted pitch, which will likely feature these additional qualities: 

• Engaging hooks
• Exposition of problems and their fixes
• Facilitation of confident, unique solutions

Engaging Hooks 

Your MSP business needs to hook prospects like you hook a fish. Consultation can be that hook–being a resource can draw them to you. But there’s more than just information to consider as a “hooking” mechanism. Additionally, you might lead with savings, or demonstrating potentiality through products and services. 

Exposition of Problems and Their Fixes 

You must clearly communicate what issues are and how to fix them. Many prospects have no idea there are issues, much less how to fix them. Be sure to use colloquial language which isn’t tech speak. Most clients won’t understand shop talk pertaining to IT, so find ways of communicating clearly. This is where the aforementioned practice comes in.  

Facilitation of Confident, Unique Solutions 

You’ve got to have solutions which prospects can get their minds around. It’s no good to say total redundancy can be localized on-site with a well-maintained RAID option. But if you tell them information across multiple hard drives makes fixing a broken one easy as plugging the new unit in, they can grasp what you’re saying. Be confident, and offer unique solutions in ways clients understand. 

Leveraging Pitching and Consultation 

Your MSP business must act in a consultative capacity, and it must pitch well. Aligning these things can increase conversion. Be confident, offer unique solutions, demonstrate problems and fixes, and be balanced–such actions are apt to initiate increased conversion.   

An MSP company, like any successful business, must maintain forward positive growth or face dissolution. This is true in IT more than other businesses owing to the breakneck pace technology expands.

Computer capability doubles every 18 months. Keeping pace requires running a tight business “ship” and consistently moving from “strength to strength”. Following are three ways well-proven in terms of effectiveness pertaining to sustainable operational growth:

1. Acquire and Act on Feedback of Clients

An MSP company needs to get feedback from existing clients, from leads, and from site visitors. Provide means by which they can communicate with you and share their thoughts.

Ensure you take the delivered feedback with a grain of salt. There will be scenarios where the advice you get is inapplicable. Working with agencies which have an SEO focus and also make MSPs their primary clients can help you get a proper feel for feedback.

2. Use Subscribers to Get Ideas Regarding Promotions or Value-Rich Content

Subscribers to your email marketing campaigns and blog know what they want. Regularly ask for their input regarding the promotions they’d like to see and the topics they’d like you to cover.

This does two things: one, it helps you transcend writer’s block and produce value-rich content precisely aligned to your demographic. Two, it makes customers feel heard and included, increasing their loyalty to your brand.

3. Use Referrals and Customer Testimonials to Expand Your Clientele

When a customer refers someone to you, that’s powerful and likely to result in conversion. Additionally, people listen to others’ appraisal of a business over the business itself. Using legitimate customer reviews is a good marketing tactic.

Grow to Match Market Transitions

Your MSP company must grow to survive. Getting client feedback, ideas from subscribers pertaining to content, and using a referral/review approach to acquire new clients or convert prospects will likely yield reliable forward growth.

Your MSP company will be well-advised to specify values which define you and which you expect to be reflected in the conduct of your team. Following are ways to check whether values you seek to impart are being practiced by employees: 

The Right Employees Find Solutions, Not Reasons It Can’t Be Done 

Your MSP company should look for and encourage employees who have a “can do” attitude. With technology, you’re always going to come across impediments. The key to being stronger is how well you’re able to handle them. 

No roadblock should set you back continually. There are always solutions. If your employees don’t have this attitude, no values you try to instill will be reflected in their behavior. 

Seek “can do” people during interviews, and if you incidentally hire an “I can’t do it” person, find a place to put them where they can be productive without negatively impacting your team. That, or let them go and find someone else. 

The Right Managers Mingle with Employees to Learn “The Buzz” 

Sometimes, your values themselves may be a little off. In order to understand where employees are coming from, it’s important for those in management to constantly be among them. 

You shouldn’t be afraid to get your hands dirty and roll up your sleeves when it comes to coding or something similar. This is the only way to learn “the buzz” and determine how harmonious operations truly are. 

Proper Management Builds Real Connections 

If you build connections among your team, they’re more likely to reflect your business values voluntarily. Working among your team and learning “the buzz” can help here. Have long-term, true relationships inform your own values pertaining to those you lead. 

Aligned Values 

When your MSP company has managers building connections, understands the team “buzz”, and works with “can do” people, operational values are more likely to be established.   

An MSP company that isn’t transparent with employees will find that employees won’t be transparent, either. But transparency can be difficult because there are legitimate reasons not to inform employees of certain thing sometimes. The same is true with clients. With this in mind, following are several tips to help you facilitate appropriate transparency:  

Be Honest and Straightforward at Every Opportunity 

As an MSP company, you’re going to have a lot of complicated issues you must provide resolution to. You’ll have clients of all kinds, and you’ll have a variety of idiosyncrasies defining internal staff. 

If you temporize or deflect, that’s going to have a negative domino effect throughout operations. What you want to do is answer all questions as honestly as possible. 

Whenever you can be honest, do so. There will be times when you have to keep things to yourself, but there will be more times when you have a chance to either be honest or brush somebody off. Don’t brush them off, tell the truth.  

Don’t Say You Know Something When You Don’t  

If you don’t know the answer, it’s better leadership to admit as much than to fake it like you know what you’re talking about. This is another easier-said-than-done technique in terms of transparency, as most people today have grown accustomed to pretending knowledge when they don’t have it. 

Explain Your Reasoning Behind Certain Directives 

Tell employees why you’re having them do something. If you’ve tasked a part of your team with rebuilding some proprietary software, tell them why. Don’t just leave them to the Sisyphean task with no explanation. 

Clearer, More Effective Leadership 

An MSP company will generally operate more securely through transparent managerial ethics. Give employees your reasoning, tell the truth, and if you don’t know something, be sure to express that. These tactics will go a long way toward helping your operation maintain desired transparency.  

Your MSP company should focus on maintaining loyalty among clients. If you’ve got one client who does $3k worth of business with you annually, over 20 years that’s $720k. If you’ve got 10 clients who only stay with you a year at $3k a month, that’s $360k. 

In this instance, the one provides more than the many over time. If you’ve got 10 legacy clients at the same rate, that’s $7.2 million. Customer loyalty programs can help facilitate just this kind of long-term, positive client relationship. Following are additionally considerable benefits of such a strategy:  

Resource Retention 

When an MSP company focuses on customer loyalty programs, it doesn’t have to spend as much on acquiring and converting new leads. Ultimately, money is saved. When you can conserve resources, you can branch out into R&D, increasing the “surface area” of provisions for potential clients. Additionally, you can devote resources toward targeted marketing campaigns with greater effectiveness. 

Data Collection 

Over time, it becomes easier to collect information on prospects who are loyal. You know what they’re going to buy, you know when they’re going to upgrade. CRM (Customer Resource Management) software can be used to categorize that data and help you suggest upgrades or upsells at periods during a yearly service cycle wherein a long-time client is more likely to pursue additional services. 

Attracting New Clients and Giving Yourself Room to Grow 

When prospects can see that you’ve served customers similar to them in the way they’re looking to be served, then they’re going to be attracted to you. With loyal clients, you have more sustainable profitability over the long-term as well, which allows you to both plan and execute growth with greater confidence. 

Customer Loyalty: Advantageous 

It’s wise to focus your energy on fostering customer loyalty. An MSP company shouldn’t shy away from a customer loyalty program. Benefits include resource retention, data collection, new client attraction, and more room to grow. 

Any given MSP company has its own unique culture. If you’re going to ensure yours operates at highest potential, it’s integral you design operational culture directives which match core prerogatives. 

If you’re providing solutions for startup agencies focusing on law, you want a professional culture which matches the proclivities of the attorneys you’re serving. If you’re primarily serving educational institutions like elementary schools, you likewise will want to cater to them. 

Who you serve will be a large part of your brand’s overall presentation and your corporate culture. Following are tactics to help you most securely iron out internal culture: 

First, Determine Your Brand’s Culture 

Your MSP company won’t develop a culture without effort. Before establishing anything, determine what defines you and clientele. If you’re a startup, figure out what you can do that puts you in competitive standing with similar organizations, and construct a value proposition. If you’ve got clients, it makes sense to design corporate culture around them.   

Commit Tenets of Your Operation’s Culture to Writing 

When you understand what you stand for and what clients need, you want to write those determinations down. Certainly, there’s room for corporate culture to change as your business does over time, but when establishing a culture, it’s important to start with everybody as much on the same page as possible. So, give them a page to be on by writing down pertinent info regarding culture.    

Consciously Design Culture Around What You’ve Written Down  

When you’ve determined what your culture is, and put it in writing, your next step is to enact it. This can be hard if you’re shifting established practices, so it’s best to establish corporate culture early on with your MSP. 

Strong Culture 

An MSP company that determines culture, codifies it and enacts it will give clientele a somewhat stationary contact point. This makes you appear more reliable and simultaneously helps your MSP make the right moves going forward.

Your MSP company needs to optimize at all levels. One area which is fundamental to successful forward operations involves employees. Your employees won’t always do their best, they won’t always be satisfied, and sometimes you’ll have to fire them. But you’ll increase their retention if you properly manage them and you’ll reduce the workload on yourself at the same time. Following are a few tips to facilitate such outcomes:  

Give Them the Tools They Need to Succeed 

Your MSP company needs to enable your employees. If those in sales have an order input system that is sluggish and often crashes, they’ll have to temporize with clients in the middle of what may otherwise have been a successful sale. Clients get annoyed when something simple takes longer than it should. Always ensure all employees of your operation at every level have the tools necessary to succeed. If they’re not doing good with the right tools, then there’s more likely a personal issue at play. 

Ensure Appreciation Is Communicated Regularly 

You must communicate that you value the team members you’ve hired. You can’t do this once or twice, you need to do it whenever you find an opportunity. Say nice things. Help your workers feel better about themselves. Employees who feel empowered in this way are more likely to perform at peak effectiveness.  

Resist the Urge to Micromanage  

Micromanagement is necessary with newer employees and those who you suspect may be acting unscrupulously. But generally, micromanagement is just going to irritate everybody, and it’s going to stress you out. Quit it. Unless there’s a valid reason, let things progress naturally and only render input when you need to.  

More Satisfied Clientele, Smoother Operations 

An MSP company with employees who have the right tools, know they’re appreciated, and don’t fear their boss breathing down their neck is a tech operation likely to keep workers around longer while simultaneously reducing managerial stress.