What are the three major success factors of MSP?
Output touches are critical. Using our sales process as a differentiator and providing excellent services are our keys to expanding advanced business systems during this period.
As things continue to grow, we have actually decided to increase the activity rather than reduce it.
# 1 - Activity.
For us, nothing replaces quality work, especially now that you look at COVID-19. We have created a benchmark for every managed IT, employee, to complete more than 150 assignments per week and there is a way to strategically perform significant tasks.
We want to help others achieve their technological goals with empathy. It is not about a short-term pipeline, but about building a long-term pipeline so that opportunities arise in the future.
# 2 - Process Alignment.
We want to make sure that our customers' buying process matches our sales process. Our selection of IT customers managed at Advance is unique. It is important that not only our customers choose us, but we choose them to create a successful partnership.
# 3 - Service Delivery.
During this time, we must also support our current customers with an exceptional level of service. These customer relationships are the key to new recommendations that are more important than ever these days. In our strategic business reviews with existing customers, we need to understand who they know so that we can help with technology.
What is important for the role and responsibility of a managed IT vendor?
Our goal with IT providers is to disqualify opportunities so that we hope that all objections will be resolved when we enter the sales funnel. This is a natural culmination that can lead to a very high completion rate of managed IoT services opportunities.
The successful skills of the IT vendor must be able to:
Qualify potential customers inside and outside the funnel.
Identify emotional business issues or challenges in a potential IT goal.
Get access and connect with level C and decision-makers.
Have a high-level business conversation to avoid technical discussions that could affect the opportunity
Confidence and competence for a budget discussion.
Make sure your potential appreciates IT and sees it as an investment to grow your business and use technology to be safer and more efficient.
Vertical market training to position you as a specialist buyer (we spend a lot of time developing vertical knowledge with our IT provider).
Prepare the conditions for the appearance of a real partnership.
You have a sales mindset to look for opportunities and lead activities.
A sales cycle can take up to 30 days for an imaging device or imaging solution as a sales transaction. However, we know that the managed IT sales cycle is a different mindset and can take longer - between 90 days, 6 months or even a year. This depends on the client, his current situation, the existing contractual agreements and the changes that take place in his activity.
On a managed IT opportunity, it is very important for our employees to build the funnel, develop these relationships, and continually publish content to encourage qualified prospects.
It takes patience and you need to have the organization behind you to make the investments as you build your pipeline and understand why you are moving away from certain “opportunities” that do not fit well in long run. We are lucky that Advance has their support and now it has resulted in a robust pipeline that we can selectively select.
Note: You Guys can also Submit a Guest Post like this.
What was the biggest engine of your Advance success?
I would say that our biggest engine of success at Advance is our sales process. We believe that partnerships in the field of IT services are mutual decisions. We choose our partners, as well as Advance, to support their organization.
During these discussions, we build a relationship that feels different from our potential partners. The perspective begins to understand very early in our discussions that we are a different type of organization, and the sale/purchase process encourages separation for us from other organizations that we can consider.
