Top 10 Tips to Improve Your Managed Services Sales Process

During the Ingram Micro Seismic Partner Conference in Dallas, VP Justin Crotty offered 10 tips for improving your managed services sales process. Crotty credited a specific managed service provider for the tips. Alas, I missed the MSP’s name — but I will ask Crotty for the company name shortly. In the meantime, here are those top 10 tips…

1. Build your brand: Crotty says Ingram believes individual VARs have the most valuable brands in the channel. His key points: Don’t rely on vendors to market for you. Vendor brands are important,  but not as important as your brand.

2. Develop and distribute customer profiles: Find the common characteristics across your customer base, then target similar customers during prospecting.

3. Develop effective marketing collateral: Crotty asked the roughly 275 attendees if they employed a marketing professional. I estimate that roughly 20 percent of the attendees raised their hands and said yes. According to Crotty, a marketing investment is the most important investment you can make in your business over the next 18 months

4. Develop “perfect customer” criteria and qualify them: I missed some of the key examples here, but Crotty said this tip goes hand-in-hand with top 2.

5. Simplify T’s and C’s in agreements: Examine your company contracts, terms and agreements. Make sure they use language customers can understand.

6. Disciplined prospecting: Focus, focus, focus

7. Develop customer case studues and testimonials: And give those happy customers something in return

8. Don’t be afraid to hire “green” sales people: The old myth that you need to fire your sales staff is just that — a myth, Crotty insisted. But he also noted that MSPs spend too much time looking for experienced sales pros and should spend a bit more time speaking with green, energetic salespeople who can make a difference in your business.

9. Upsell often: Always talk about your total solution set and do it consistently, Crotty noted

10. Stress value-added services vs. SaaS: Talk about your value, don’t talk about SaaS, utility, cloud and HaaS because end-customers don’t care about or understand those terms.

Again, I need to check in with Crotty and get the name of the MSP who gave him the list above. Updates to follow throughout today.

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