How To Sell Managed Services To Smb

Once upon a time, businesses could go by with little technology — a phone, a credit carte du jour machine, and possibly an email address.

Today, about aspects of a visitor rely heavily on information technology. Information technology's what'southward used to connect with customers, shop data, comply with regulations, and collaborate within teams. And while it has certainly made life a lot easier, information technology too comes with the hiccups associated with any blazon of applied science. Crashed systems. Downtime. Inefficient processes.

It's an entire manufacture begging for aid. Withal, not everyone has the budget to have IT experts on their payroll as total-time employees. What's a person to do? Why, wait into managed services!

Quick Links

What are Managed Services?
How Nosotros Learned Strategies to Sell Managed Services
Questions to Enquire Prospective Partners
Mutual Challenges When Selling Managed Services
seven Steps to Sell Managed Services
Track the Progress of Your Sales Squad With BrightGauge'due south Data Dashboards

What Are Managed Services?

Managed services refers to outsourcing specific tasks. Within the it industry, this encompasses a wide array of services, including:

Cybersecurity
Deject infrastructure management
SaaS direction
Disaster recovery
Help desk

It's an efficient way to optimize IT support, since managed service providers (MSPs) hire experienced experts in several niche areas — something that would be cost prohibitive to a lot of businesses to maintain in-house. Information technology also ensures that you lot accept a defended team that maintains existing infrastructures and anticipates potential issues then that they can be addressed before they interrupt your operations.

How We Learned Strategies to Sell Managed Services

At BrightGauge, we learned effective strategies to sell managed services during the years nosotros scaled our Miami-based company, Compuquip Cybersecurity. Our approaches proved to be effective, resulting in a monthly recurring acquirement (MRR) growth from 800K to $8.8MM. Although we ultimately sold the business, the lessons we learned along the manner are still constructive, and the topic continues to exist one of the most popular that we answer for our community.

During this procedure, nosotros learned how to truly become our clients' business partners. Nosotros weren't trying to simply make more than sales. We offered resources and solutions to run their operations efficiently, on a long-term basis.

Call back the cease goal of managed services: you want to exist your client's business organization partner, non just a vendor. Equally a business partner, you provide value on an ongoing basis. On the other paw, vendors act equally a nameless, faceless entity that simply sells products and services. That'south why it's of import to sell your company as a partner.

In your half of the partnership as MSP, yous must provide the talent and processes (and in some cases the equipment likewise) to offer a complete service to your clients. The client as well has to make a commitment in trusting you to effectively manage their systems, on top of the toll of the service itself.

Both parties are taking on some risk in the showtime, and if the partnership doesn't piece of work out, then it's expensive and time-consuming (for both sides) to sever the managed services understanding. That's why it's critical that you get it right.

We took stock of everything we learned well-nigh selling managed services during those five years, and accept been helping MSPs apply these steps to improve their sales procedure. Are you ready to have notes?

Questions To Enquire Prospective Partners

Sometimes people don't even realize that a recurring outcome may accept a significant bear upon on their business organization operations. Therefore, it's crucial to enquire the right questions, to become prospects to consider all relevant factors. Things you always want to inquire include:

What are your main IT concerns?
How are you ensuring terminate-to-finish security?
How do you know if your remote workforce is connecting to protected networks?
How accept network downtimes affected your quarterly financial goals?
How much practise you spend on IT support each quarter?

The reason why you want to enquire all the right questions is because one time you lot accept the answers, you'll be in a improve position to propose adequate solutions to their specific needs.

Common Challenges When Selling Managed Services

In order to be successful selling services, y'all have to anticipate prospects' concerns. This will permit you lot to provide reassurances as you accost them on the spot. Some of the most common ones include:

Customers Aren't Knowledgeable of the Services

You don't know what you don't know, and that tin definitely hurt you. This applies to everyone across the lath — merely particularly, to businesses that aren't aware of cybersecurity issues they're facing or of the available solutions. They may also not be aware of how they can get more hours dorsum from their day past streamlining procedures and integrating platforms.

In fact, there are still plenty of individuals who even so spend a pregnant corporeality of time gathering analytics from unlike sources and manually entering the data into a unmarried certificate. Tell them how each of your solutions gives them time back (or the peace of mind necessary for a good dark's sleep) and scout them suddenly become more than interested.

Customers Believe the Solutions Are Likewise Expensive

Every single business will try to maximize profits and reduce costs. However, this can't exist done at the expense of their reputation. If a customer believes a service is too expensive, there are ways to provide options without lowering pricing.

For instance, a contract that is more focused on pause/ready solutions or one that only provides additional services to a specific number of users/devices. That said, sometimes, nickel and diming services will backfire in the event of a major security alienation. And then information technology'southward good to be acquainted with similar stories within a prospect's industry and how your specific solutions could assistance significantly lower those risks.

Needs for Services Are Evolving

No business organization is stagnant (at least, non successful ones). And neither is engineering. Since one of the skills of constructive MSP technicians is to conceptualize potential issues, it's good to convey that messaging in the sales process.

While the scope of work volition always be delineated in the service agreement, information technology's good for prospects to know that in the event that XYZ likely scenarios may popular up, you would yet exist able to assess it and provide them with a quote for adequate solutions.

7 Steps to Sell Managed Services

While each client has different needs, there are common denominators in most sales processes. Becoming acquainted with the post-obit steps will increase your chances of success:

one. Know The Services You lot Offer Similar the Back Of Your Hand

First things kickoff. You can't sell something you don't understand. You may miss upsell and cross-sell opportunities — or making a sale in the first place. Fully understanding how each service works and all related processes provides y'all with credibility, as it allows you to explicate everything confidently.

In improver, knowing everything well will allow you to provide the right solutions for the specific prospect you're speaking with at the moment. There'due south no need to complicate the conversation by bringing upward services that aren't relevant to them.

2. Aim to Understand Their Pain Points

Something that is useful in the context of sales is familiarity with the Jobs to Exist Washed framework. This is an approach that focuses on the customer's specific end goals. People aren't ownership software simply for the sake of owning it.

They desire to scale and grow their businesses and then they can get out a legacy. They want to piece of work more efficiently and then they tin can enjoy their personal lives more. They desire to help pocket-sized businesses come across their goals. Then what tin can yous do to get them there?

three. Offer Customized Solutions

There seldom is a 1-size-fits-all approach that's effective. Yous want to offer solutions that reduce the fourth dimension a prospect spends working — from APIs, ensuring end-to-end security, or developing an awarding, to proper name a few. This is the reason why it's essential to ask the right questions in the first identify.

Instead of presenting prospects with generic menu options, you are offering something that would specifically help them.

iv. Provide a History of Your Success

When pitching a new prospect, one of the best means to build trust is to prove prove of a long track tape in the services that you are offer. Exercise that by showing them hard data that details how you've helped clients become more profitable.

As a new company, you might not have a lot of data on hand to dorsum that you are the best choice to handle their IT systems. If this sounds like your scenario, so consider these options to assist prospects vet your visitor:

- Share personal achievements and experience. If you take experience working within the industry, that experience is relevant to your prospects. Share your feel with them to ease concerns and bear witness capability in the services beingness discussed.

- Provide testimonials and referrals from previous clients. Being able to bespeak to previous clients who accept had positive outcomes from your services is a bang-up fashion to show experience and ease concerns. Y'all can even become a step further, and fix a conversation between a new prospect and an one-time customer to talk over the results from your services.

- Bring them on a tour of your office. Bringing potential clients in to see your office shows them that you have your team, your procedures, and your business under command. With dashboards on heads-upward displays throughout the role, they tin can see that your SLAs are always acme of mind, and they can find how your team works together to resolve tickets for your existing customer base.

Reliable IT services are a crucial function of any modern business organisation, so information technology makes sense that whatever company considering your business will want to confirm your expertise before agreeing to a long-term deal. If you're a new MSP, that could hateful you have to put in a fleck of extra effort to help ease concerns before working to secure any new, high-value clients.

5. Ascertain Your Scope of Work

Ane critical aspect of negotiating a managed services agreement is ensuring that both sides have a house agreement of the service scope. A well-defined scope helps avoid future disputes where the client feels as if the agreed upon service hasn't been delivered. Your contract should outline each individual service separately and clearly prepare expectations.

Here's a look at part of the telescopic that we would list in each one of our managed services agreements (there were too sections to cover the scope of network security, endpoint management, and strategic planning):

You should also take the time to conduct a total evaluation of the network and IT services of the prospect before providing a proposal. It'south impossible to know what to propose without beginning understanding the systems that they already have in place. The less amending that must exist washed later, the ameliorate.

6. Know Your Value and Price Appropriately

A common fault made past young MSPs is a willingness to negotiate pricing. If y'all're tempted to lower your cost to bring in initial clients, you too have to think that a price drop can negatively bear upon their perceived value of the services y'all offer.

Put another way, value-based pricing puts you in a position to accuse what your services are worth to the client, so it's imperative that you nail the value component of the partnership correct off the bat.

Then rather than throwing out a "bargain" or a price cutting, instead focus on educating the prospect well-nigh the advantages that your service will bring to the table — and attempt to connect those advantages to real-world business cases when possible, because that's the point where value becomes obvious to them. Assuasive them to see that real-world data ensures clients never feel like they are being overcharged.

Plus, understanding your value and charging what you lot're worth can help to facilitate positive long-term partnerships with clients. At the cease of the day, you're non competing solely on toll. You lot're good at what y'all do. Charge accordingly.

7. Keep Contracts Simple

No one likes reading convoluted language. Information technology'due south one of the many reasons lawyer jokes be. Ensure that every service is spelled out every bit a line-item, detailing the exact telescopic of the service, equally well as the monthly charge. Additionally, be sure to include upsells, upgrades, and boosted consulting fees directly in the contract to avoid future disputes.

Rails the Progress of Your Sales Team With BrightGauge's Information Dashboards

With a multifariousness of pre-built dashboard templates and a fully customizable system with filters for your departments, BrightGauge'due south dashboard solutions can aid you stay on rails, adjust when needed, and encounter your goals, short and long term. You can use existing dashboards or build your ain, depending on your needs, and our team is ready to help y'all.

Free MSA Template

Whether yous're planning your first managed services agreement, or you're ready to overhaul your existing version, nosotros've got you lot covered!

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