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Have You Got the Right Managed Services Attitude?
Making the switch from the traditional “Break-Fix” model to a “Managed Services” way of doing business can be a frightening prospect. One of the most common questions we hear f
January 16, 2009
2 Min Read
By Paul Barnett 1
Making the switch from the traditional “Break-Fix” model to a “Managed Services” way of doing business can be a frightening prospect. One of the most common questions we hear from our partners is “How do I sell this to my clients?” Most VARs feel hesitant to present an MSP way of doing business to their already existing break-fix customers, and understandably so. Here’s how to overcome that issue.
At Virtual Administrator, we have found that it is all in the presentation of your offering. Many of your clients are going to be hesitant about moving from a “pay as you go” plan to monthly subscription fee. It’s psychological–paying a few hundred dollars, to fix a PC problem, here and there, can seem easier to swallow for a small business owner than being locked into a fifteen hundred dollar monthly “all you can eat” plan.
Areas to Highlight
Show your client what they truly spend. Many times, their current monthly costs already exceed or are close to what they would spend on a managed services plan.
Highlight the insurance aspect of your Manage Services plan. If a server goes down, you have them covered. They will not have to pay thousands of dollars in labor to get things up and running again. It’s all a part of their contract.
Explain how your services will now be proactive rather than reactive. Let them know, since you are on the hook for labor, you are going to do everything in your power to keep their network running at peak performance. In the old “break fix’ model, it was beneficial for your business when things went wrong. Now the contrary is true.
Predictability is another big selling point. Most business owners hate the unknown and it behooves you to play on this. Make it clear that their monthly IT labor costs will be the same, no matter how many problems they have. Whether they use ninety hours of labor or nine in one month, their costs will be constant. This is huge.
And finally, the most important thing to remember is that it is all about attitude. If you are hesitant and unsure about your service offering, your customers will be too.
Be confident and reassure them that this is the best option for their business. When taking on a new customer, make sure they believe that Managed Services is the normal way you do business–the “break-fix” model is not even on the table.
Highlight the benefits of your plan and believe in those benefits. If you do this, our experience at Virtual Administrator suggests you will succeed.
Paul Barnett is marketing director for Virtual Administrator, which offers hosted solutions for managed service providers. Guest blog entries such as this one are contributed on a monthly basis as part of MSPmentor.net’s 2009 Platinum sponsorship.
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