After almost 30 years in business, and living off of referrals and a lot of hope, Invario was suddenly at a crossroads in 2017. Our flagship product, Worry-Free Server, was no longer relevant as customers raced to the cloud. At the same time, our customers were enduring serious and frequent cyber-attacks. They went from loving us to barely tolerating us. Something needed to change. And fast.

While at an ASCII event, we had a frank and honest internal discussion: should we sell our company ‘as is’ or go for it, revitalize and GROW the company? We met Robin Robins’ team at this event, and something about Technology Marketing Toolkit spoke to us. We chose growth and signed up that day for the Toolkit, Rapid Implementation Workshop (RIW) and Boot Camp. Of course, we immediately put the Toolkit on the shelf for a few months and went back to our old ways … ways that were NOT working.

Robin’s RIW was just what we needed to get out of our rut and start growing again. The experience was amazing, and we learned a ton! Without hesitation, we kick-started our marketing by getting quality testimonials from our clients. The heartening response really inspired the team. Next, we requested quarterly business reviews from our clients. The power of marketing was starting to take hold. Added bonus: we learned about Carvir at RIW, the answer to our cyber security woes. Shortly after RIW, we began selling our enhanced cyber security solutions.

In just three months following this workshop, we’ve traveled an enormous distance in a short time. Invario today acts and feels like a totally different company from where we were at the end of 2017. Over the course of the 90 days, we transformed our company through defining our target market, reconnecting with our customers, improving our website, adding a robust CRM solution, resurrecting our monthly blog, developing our Shock-And-Awe leave-behind package and sending out our first direct mail piece.

Most IT business owners don’t realize that marketing isn’t simply what you send to prospects and customers, it’s the heartbeat of your business. After RIW, we embarked on a major reengineering of our whole company, including better tracking of our revenue, costs and profits; updating products and services to include many cyber security products; pursuing joint ventures with insurance industry contacts; implementing structured weekly team meetings; developing customer score cards; and onboarding many promising vendors. The results: customer satisfaction is up, and there’s a new energy throughout Invario.

This is the third time Invario has worked with a marketing company, but the only time we’ve had marketing materials specific to our business. These are the results we’ve experienced to date through Robin’s program:

• E-mail Campaign To Warm Leads: Meeting with a potential ‘whale’ customer ($10K MRR) next week.
• Quarterly Business Reviews And Cyber Security Cross-sell Campaign: 11 QBRs completed to date, resulting in $5,000 in project revenue and $2,789 in MRR.
• Shock-And-Awe Box Leave-Behind: Brought in two new customers, resulting in $1,845 project revenue and $2,082 in MRR. An additional $2K in MRR is in the sales pipeline.

In addition to the great results we’ve already described, we recently learned we’ve sold enough Datto products to reach Professional Partner tier. We may have completed the first 90 days, but this isn’t the end of our journey. We are just getting started and looking forward to seeing where this new path takes us.