MSP 2.0 Business Building: August 2013

Saturday, August 24, 2013

How to aligne with the client?

First awareness of your service: Since you are doing such a good job as an MSP you basically disappear. You meet the client quarterly, the technicians are not seen so often, all the issues in the ticketing system are solved quickly. That is why you are hired.
However, in a while it may pose a possible risk as they do not experience that you are "working". It has nothing to do with reports and such things; they are just not in a position to be able to judge the amount of work and your level of commitment to ensure that their system is up and running.

Second expectation: As you may have realized, building up the service offerings of a solid MSP is not an easy task. It took years to build, optimize with all the trials and errors. That is why you have a full expertise in this field. But your client knows a very little about what you are doing. They are expecting the results, and they do not really understand how and why it is working. But again, they have expectations. These expectations have nothing to do with the services they have ordered. They did not order the service; they ordered the results, the experience you had promised. Well, they have signed the contract, but, what do you do if the CEO complains because your company has charged them 4 hours for setting up his home cinema system with the NAS at his home?

Third alignment: If awareness and expectation meet, there is alignment. Either you can align the system from bottom up, case by case by trial and error or if an issue comes up, you either fix the expectation or the service awareness. That is a very unpredictable and slow process. The other way to do it is from top to bottom. That means, you have to see the big picture and break it down into details. Usually, it seems impractical, so the client does not have enough patience to go through the process altogether.
The solution is a mix of both.

But just imagine:

With ReframingYourClients you are able to

collect all the necessary issues that should be aligned (bottom) in a questionnaire
analyze it from both parties' perspective
have a workshop where you are able to present the differences
have the conversation about how to fix misalignments in an action plan
set up the proper awareness and expectation to be able to set the relationship to the next level

To be aligned with the client is the first but maybe the most important step for developing a fruitful relationship. But there are further steps you can use to increase your credibility to WOW your clients all the time.

See:

Sales techniques:

vCIO researches:

Saturday, August 17, 2013

How to learn techniques if i do not have time?

You are leading a growing company with all of the hassles, problems and challenges. The last thing you need is a next thing to learn and invest time and money in.

There are tons of training, webinar, education, certification solutions for MSPs how to be better at marketing, service delivery, sales, even search engine optimization. Usually the way is to learn a lot, try to implement it, invest an awful lot of time and money to make the change stick, and get some results; however, in most cases the process is not moving further so the result is lacking.

But if you think about it most of the expertise you have did not come from classrooms, or training. You gained them from practice, experience and talking with others. This is experiential learning. This is a good one because it gives you fast feedback, motivation and result, step by step.
I am sure you have been in sales training or have read about sales before. How lame did you feel the first time you tried to put those things in practice? Usually it is because your level of theory and practice are not the same. You knew what you should have done, but you just weren’t able to do it…

But just imagine:

With ReframingYourClients you are able to

start getting results immediately, without spending hours or days on training
learn consultative sales step by step in practice and learn and grow continuously
be yourself during the process, you do not have to memorize sales pitches
start up with your colleagues and share the experiences you gain on the way, learn together
have endless space to grow and develop in practice

To learn and experience something new does not necessarily requires up front investments. It is easier than it seems to be

See:

Sales techniques:

vCIO researches:

Thursday, August 15, 2013

Leverage on hidden resources

From a business development perspective, your biggest resources are your clients, your clients' network, your e-mail list, your social media network and your partner base.

With ReframeYourClients, you are able to give a very high value to your prospects with a very small amount of investment or for free. After filling out the 15 minute questionnaire, you can make a reporting workshop with the 7C canvas, and show the industry specific benchmarks or even the info graphic analysis. You can sell this opportunity in a much easier way than anything else that has come before.

How ReframeYourClients can help you to leverage on hidden resources?

you can share your badges, results, your clients testimonials in your social media automatically
you let others sign up for the questionnaire directly through your custom URL
you can make a campaign for the existing mailing list with an auto responder sequence
you can embed your stats in your website with a call to action
you can let your clients share their results with their network
you can let your employees share badges with their network
you can embed active promotional and educational materials in your website, Facebook, Google+ and Linkedin pages

See:

Sales techniques:

vCIO researches: