MSP 2.0 Business Building: MSP 2.0 Marketing

Showing posts with label MSP 2.0 Marketing. Show all posts

Thursday, September 19, 2013

What can we do if our clients put us in the "techy" slot?

The existing customer base is truly a good start to grow. Your mutual past will determine what the opportunities could be. As you have provided several services to the client, he puts you in a slot. He can put you in the IT geek slot, in the IT advisor slot, the IT department slot, or whatever slots they have in mind, and whatever services you have been doing for them.

The problem is that the slots are limiting your options. If you have been doing remote support, monitoring and backup, it is quite hard to come up with ideas about Cloud strategy or a CRM implementation project. The MSPs usually start the job by doing technology related things, so they put you in one of the technology related executor's slots in their heads. They are expecting expertise in the things you have been doing.

Would it not be strange to get an offer from Starbucks for a fine Steak, or for a bottle of wine from CocaCola? These are offers are from the same industry, but from different segments. So you have the slots in your head already.

This is what branding and reframing are all about. “Reframing” means to change the perception of the client about your capabilities. This reframing is not about telling you how good you are or having better marketing materials.

It is about experience. They have to experience that you are different from what they have thought. It shouldn’t be some slight difference. It has nothing to do with how many things you can offer. It has to do with how high-level a business-related partner they could have.

This has to be a real eye opener, a thought provoking experience, to make the change and put you to a more valuable, interesting slot in their heads.
After that, the conversation and the respect will be different.

But just imagine:

With ReframingYourClients you are able to:

shake up your clients with a thought- provoking questionnaire
facilitate a fun, engaging, eye opener workshop with very special tools in place
act like a business coach, asking the right questions, and helping them to think
tell stories about business opportunities achievable by IT with a gorgeous Info graphic report and with your personal analysis
formulate short, medium, and long term IT plans for the global IT strategy of the company
align everybody to execute those action plans and strategies

As you move out of the techy slot, the perceived value grows, and the billable hourly projects or recurring revenues can rise as well.

See: Trusted Advisor or Technician, What Pays More?

Saturday, September 14, 2013

We do not have a unique value proposition really

In most cases, an ordinary MSP does nothave a unique value proposition. They may have a value proposition such as complete services, user friendliness, advanced technology, 24/7 availability, a friendly help desk or things like that.

The trick about a unique value proposition is that it is hard to copy, and it solves a very important problem for the client.

The unique value proposition is the essence of your service offering, the key element which makes you different from the rest of the MSPs in your area.

If you value the following:

business continuity
proactivity
professionalism
transparency
measurability
business focus
cost effectiveness

You may build up the unique value proposition of "making the client more competitive with IT" period. As opposed to writing it to your marketing collateral, do it, live it every day.

The idea behind ReframeYourClients is exactly to be able to fulfill this unique value proposition. Every organization has the right to earn more revenue, cut costs and increase their credibility to be more competitive through Information Technology.

If these opportunities are valued in your company culture, ReframeYourClients can help you to put these together and fulfill the promise of your unique value proposition.

But just imagine:

With ReframingYourClients you are able to:

Ensure business continuity and security which is the basis of any organization’s credibility
Set the stage for proactivity in every way for IT
Increase professionalism on services, users, devices and management
Increase transparency of the IT ecosystem
Build measurability around the IT ecosystem
Help the client to reach its personal and corporate goals through a global IT strategy
Ensure the highest value in the lowest cost possible at all times

This is not a tall tale. This is what you are already doing in a certain sense, but putting it all together gives you an unbeatable credibility and professionalism against your competitors .

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: