How Coaching Your Clients Leads To Higher MSP Profits (Pt. 2)

Welcome back! This week we’re exploring how to develop a relationship with the clients you have to turn them into the clients you want. Read on…

Part 2 of Coach Your MSP Clients How To Buy For Higher Profits: How To Develop Your Clients Into Great Clients

A critical piece to the success of any service firm is to have a productive, profitable and mutually beneficial relationship with its clients – yet how many business owners actually FOCUS on developing that asset?

Can you list the systems and processes you have in place for advancing that agenda? Can you show me the specific things you are sending them, doing for them, to make them behave in a manner that allows you to deliver your best advice?

Most important question: do you have a FRAMEWORK or list of instructions on how to be a good client for your firm? Read full article and comment →

How Coaching Your Clients Leads To Higher MSP Profits (Pt. 1)

Too often, business owners overlook the buying power in the clients they ALREADY have and are too focused on acquiring new ones.

So in this two-part series, I’m going to discuss how you can increase sales with your current clients and turn them into the clients you want. Let’s dig in…

Part 1 of Coach Your MSP Clients How To Buy For Higher Profits: Teach Your Clients How To Buy

I received several letters from American Express in the last month about using your Amex card to pay your taxes.

Honestly, it never occurred to me to do this, mostly because I’ve never been unable to pay my taxes. But I know a LOT of  people who are in that situation and have not thought about this as an option.

Which brings me to a key point: teaching your clients HOW TO BUY.

Years ago I sought out and purchased a phone system from a vendor, only to have my current IT company grouse at me for not buying through them.

I told them quite clearly they were idiots for not educating, reminding and pursuing ME to let me know they even offered that.

A BIG question you need to ponder: do your clients REALLY know all of the products and services you could sell them? Read full article and comment →

How A Strong Unique Selling Proposition Helps MSPs Market Themselves

At Rapid Implementation Workshop we cover the USP, or unique selling proposition, in detail: what it is, what it is not, how to develop it and how to use it in your sales and marketing to unseat incumbent providers, close more business and fight price sensitivity.

For those unfamiliar with the concept of a USP here’s the short of it. It’s a one sentence statement explaining why a prospect should choose to do business with you versus any and every other option…including doing nothing.  An example that became famous was from Dominos Pizza. “Fresh hot pizza delivered to your door in under 30 minutes or its free!”  

More often than not, most IT services businesses do NOT have a USP and are largely a “me too” business that appears to be just like every other MSP they compete against. Because of this, they start from a weak position with no authority, which leads to difficulty in selling their services at prices even slightly higher than the competition’s.

After all, if Joe’s Computer Shack appears to be delivering managed services for $20 a seat less than you, why SHOULD prospects pay you more? While I understand there IS a legitimate difference in service, quality of delivery, etc., your PROSPECT doesn’t know.

Fast Response

Not too surprisingly, “fast response” is very often brought up as one of the key differentiators many have over their competition, and it IS a good one.  “Slow” to no response, dropped balls and poor communication are all the top reasons why businesses fire their IT company and look elsewhere. But if you’re going to claim THAT as all or part of your USP, you can’t be half in. Someone who is trained and managed needs to answer the phone LIVE, ideally 24/7, but definitely between the hours of 7:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. Read full article and comment →

Six Ways To Elegantly Overcome Price Objections In Your MSP Business

Ask any salesperson to list the most difficult obstacles for them to overcome and, inevitably, price resistance will come up.

However, I don’t believe most prospects are hung up on price – they’re hung up on something else and are using price as the reason why they aren’t buying, because it’s the easiest obstacle to throw your way.

Any prospect knows that “I can’t afford it” is an objection that’s impossible to argue, given you, the seller, have no real knowledge or ability to prove or disprove that.

Further, most salespeople will stop selling when that objection is thrown out for fear of being “pushy” or insulting the prospect.

So how do you overcome it?

Read full article and comment →

Close More MSP Sales And Unseat More Competitors By Becoming The LEAST RISKY Choice

One of the most difficult things for our members to get their head around is the USP, or unique selling proposition.

Without one, you’re pushing a rope uphill, fighting price sensitivity and the high hurdle of replacing an incumbent provider who might actually be doing a decent to excellent job.

YOU are an unknown entity, unproven in your abilities, thereby a RISKY CHOICE to the client. After all, why would anyone incur the cost and time investment to replace a vendor that is doing a satisfactory job with a complete unknown?

They won’t unless the incumbent is doing a terrible job, in which case you’re playing vulture marketing, waiting for THEM to screw up and die so you can go pick the carcass.

The other alternative is to have something SO compelling, and offering such a big, significant benefit, that the client will make the leap.

ONE of the ways you can stand out from the competition and win more clients is NOT by being the BEST at what you do, but the least risky. We all know talk is cheap (unless it’s with an attorney).

Promises and hyperbole uttered by a salesperson are the cheapest talk of all. The bold prospects will say, “Put it in writing.”

But most don’t say anything; they just secretly decide to stay put with their current provider or call someone else; rarely will they verbalize their true concerns.

So how do you fight this? Read full article and comment →

What IS Marketing Supposed To Do Anyway?

From a Harvard Business Review article, “Why CMOs NEVER Last”:

Something is amiss in the relationship between chief executives and their marketing officers. Four-fifths of CEOs say they don’t trust or are unimpressed by their CMOs. Not surprisingly, CMOs have the briefest tenure in the C-suite, and their churn can mean serious internal business disruptions.

The articles goes on to argue this is mostly due to the job description and expectations being set up poorly.

I don’t entirely disagree; however, I have studied advertising and marketing and methinks the BIGGER issue is that marketers have drifted, forgetting that marketing is about SELLING THINGS – not followers, fans, likes, shares or hashtags.

To be clear, we HERE, in THIS community, are committed to the discipline of direct response marketing.

The key differentiator of it over all other forms of advertising and branding is MEASUREMENT: measurement of actual responses, leads and ULTIMATELY sales made, clients acquired.

Everything else is “fake news,” leading you to confuse activity with accomplishment. Read full article and comment →

It’s The Thought That Counts, Right?

How many times have you been told by your Mum, “It’s the thought that counts,” as counsel after getting a worthless piece of crap for a gift?

Maybe that’s a good mantra to live by for casual gifts, but in business, it’s the worst piece of advice you can get, the worst excuse you can give.

Next month at our big annual Boot Camp (www.RobinsBigSeminar.com), 5 of our most successful members will present onstage what they did to secure an average increase in their business of $909,483 in 12 months, in addition to an 87% increase in bottom-line profits (click here to see who they are and to read their stories).

Not too shabby when you consider the average MSP never breaks the million-dollar mark in their business over their lifetime. Read full article and comment →

Fortune-Making Truths About Media, Money And Marketing Process For MSPs and IT Services Businesses

Here’s a truth many small business owners DON’T want to embrace, much less give recognition to: the more marketing media you can use simultaneously, the more money you’ll make.

You’ll also be a LOT less FRAGILE and vulnerable to an economic downturn, a serious competitor, commoditization, media disruption (like what happened to fax broadcast) or other disruptions. I would encourage you to pause for a moment and let that sink in. Think on it long and hard.

I just gave you a million-dollar “secret.”

So why don’t more have it? Because everyone – and I do mean everyone – wants the postcard they can e-mail to drive in clients.

The “one thing” that is more important than everything else. Gimme an EASY BUTTON, for goodness’ sake!

But the reality is, no business gets rich depending on ONE media, ONE strategy, ONE anything. There is power and stability in diversity and complexity. Sure, you have to start somewhere, and often “one thing done” is better than doing nothing.

As quickly as you can, you have to move beyond simple to complex. From one-shot messaging to multiple media, all interwoven, all supporting the other, all driving toward the same outcome.

So let’s break this down… Read full article and comment →

Getting 10X The Revenue From Everything You Do

When I’m working with a client to plan their marketing action list, one of the things I always look to do is take a campaign they’re currently doing that IS working, and see how I can make it pay bigger. Unfortunately, most people don’t have this ability, simply because they never put their mind to it.

For example, when you meet with a prospect, do you ask for a referral? How about after they buy, in exchange for some gift or slight discount? What do you have to lose? When closing the sale, do you offer an upsell of some kind? A warranty on new equipment? A phone system? PREPAY for the year for a 5% discount? When you go to a trade show, do you also make a point of visiting with (prospecting) the other vendors when folks are in the session? Maybe they could be a good joint venture partner or a referral source. Maybe they could become a client for you too. You’re already there, so why not make the most of it? Meet with the hotel manager and staff. Walk around other events going on. In almost every case, whatever you’re doing can be PULSED if you simply sit and think about how to maximize the opportunity. Read full article and comment →

Using Marketing Math To Hit EVERY New Year’s Goal You Set For Yourself With Certainty

Of the four M’s of marketing – Market, Message, Media and Math – the one that many don’t like is the math. Marketing is, at its core, applied psychology plus math; you can get the psychology side really, really right (offers, message, USP, etc.) but totally and completely miss your mark if the numbers side of the equation doesn’t add up; and since the New Year is when most people are setting goals for themselves, you MUST know the MATH side of the equation or you’ll frustrate yourself (and your staff) by constantly falling short of goals – and it’s VERY demoralizing for a leader to constantly set goals they don’t hit. Not knowing marketing “math” also makes it impossible to manage new sales reps, because you won’t be able to work backwards from their goal to tell them how many activities (calls, connections, appointments, proposals, etc.) they will need to conduct to hit their quota; worse, you won’t know if they HIT or MISSED their quota until it’s too late to do anything about it.

Example: A client calls in and wants to know if sending 50 Bad Date letters a week is “good.” I can’t say if it is “good” or not without knowing his specific goals. If he wants to add $1 million to his business and the average client is worth $2,000 a month, then JUST sending 50 Bad Date letters a week is NOT a sufficient plan. At $2,000 a month, he’ll need approximately 42 clients. If his close rate is 30%, he’ll need 142 proposals generated; if 50% of all leads generated are not qualified, not ready to buy now and don’t move to an appointment, he’ll need 284 leads per year and about 7,100 prospects to target per quarter if we assume an average 1% response rate to the campaign each time it’s sent (284 ÷ .01 is 28,400, then divide again by 4 to assume we remarket to that same group every quarter with a different type of lead generation campaign and offer). Based on HIS SPECIFIC GOAL, he would have to send out 546 Bad Date letters per week to hit $1 million in net new business that year if that’s ALL he was doing AND if his goal was to add $1 million in revenue with an average price point of $2,000. Read full article and comment →