Over the last 10 years I have realized that we’ve been setting appointments by using great techniques at a 10,000 feet level, but most of the computer consultants have only been able to sell with techniques at a low 1,000 feet level.  So there has been a huge gap between the type of appointments we can set and what the sales people were able pitch.

Why? The only sales that most IT firms are closing are with prospects that have obvious needs.  The marketing gap that we’re discussing has to do with the ability to persuade a firm that’s lukewarm in their overall happiness with their current IT support, a firm without obvious needs.  Most IT providers are only trained to sell to companies based on finding out what their ‘needs’ are, so if they don’t have obvious needs, then these calls end up at a dead end. (more…)

All markets have life cycles, especially with technology.  As technology increases the life cycle for the latest and greatest innovations becomes shorter and shorter.  Note the i-Pod: 4 generations, in a little under a few years.

This same principal applies to the IT services marketing space.  In around 10 years, managed IT services has gone from an obscure idea that was rejected by most computer consultants to something that has been embraced by a majority of the market for computer repair.

In the last 10 years we have seen the reason for setting an appointment with a decision maker go from wanting to learn about managed services transform into largely just taking competitive bids.  It’s much like the insurance industry, where all the insurance companies all pretty much all offering the same product, but one might have a little more coverage here or a little lower price there.

This means that the marketing message for the computer business that has been offering managed services has become saturated.  So the burning question is, what is the way forward from here? (more…)

“There is no way we’re going to change our model and switch to a flat fee!” This is what I last heard from a computer business in Dallas over 8 year ago, after I had warned them the marketing direction was transitioning to managed services.  I had thrown down the gauntlet and said I was going to  stop providing any technology sales leads for them if they didn’t change.  I loved these guys at this firm and had learned a lot from them, but I was not going to flinch from my belief that I should only work with the best companies that offered the best value in the market.

Why would I mention this old battle about the flat fee model, since for the most part it’s been decided that managed services has won the battle and it’s taken over most IT consultants model.  It’s because I found myself in the office of the exact same firm I had provided IT Sales Leads for over 8 year ago.  They had been forced to offer managed services since the market went that way!  Instead of listening to me and being an ‘early adopter’ they instead waited as other computer services firm offering the flat fee ate out of their market share. (more…)

“Guarantee Sales! No way would we  ever make any promises that we could guarantee sales…. you would have to be crazy to guarantee sales for it services marketing.”  This was the response I got recently from an MSP Vendor, when I asked them if they made any guarantees that their clients would make sales by taking their sales advice.

If you’re a computer consultant and have tried telemarketing then you probably didn’t even get most of your appointments that were promised not to mention any Sales.  So many computer business owners have been burned by telemarketing firms.  Even though our firm has been able to get sales for many of our clients, this poison well has made getting ‘drinking water’ to grow our business difficult to say the least.  So we have carefully engineered our new Guaranteed Sales program to combat this negative view of telemarketing. (more…)

We are excited to announce on short notice that MSP Telemarketing will be interviewing Gary Pica of TruMethods Today at 2:00 Central or 3:00 Eastern.  Gary Pica is a Marketing Guru that that tailors his message just for MSP!  Computer Business owners that have not heard of Gary should listen in to our interview.  Even if your a computer consultant that has heard of Gary then you still might glen some good FREE information from this interview that can help your IT sales leads right away.

Gary was a General Manager for MindSHIFT and then he left to start his own managed services firm call Dynamic Digital Services which was so successful that MindSHIFT bought him out.
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Once again we have to report a computer business that has suspended their marketing campaign temporarily with terrible side effects.  One of our reps went into our suspended clients list looking for call backs and he found an IT sales lead that had said if we called them the month prior they would be willing to compare managed services with the break-fix service they had in place.  When the rep called them back they indicated that they had just signed a managed services agreement with a competitor.

The sad part is that the campaign had been on hold since the month prior and this is why the prospect wasn’t  called back.  The client missed a golden IT sales opportunity because they had delayed signing back up again. You just never know when or where  technology sales are going to come from!
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If you’re a computer services marketing firm then stop fighting over ‘low hanging fruit’! What do we mean by ‘low hanging fruit’?

We are talking about the sales opportunities that come easier to technology firms trying to sell managed services through IT lead generation, which we have referred to as ‘broken’ leads in past blogs.

Broken leads are companies that have reached the boiling point or threshold of pain, when they actually start talking to their friends about their pain points and thereby you might end up getting a referral.Or they might finally respond to one of your post cards that they have been throwing away in the File 13  for months and now it catches their eye, since it’s top of mind. Also, they could actually go online and start searching for computer consultants and click on your pay per click ad or organic search listing.

These are the exact same opportunities that every other computer business is trying to ‘pick’.  There aren’t that many of these types of technology sales leads out there in the first place because most businesses are willing to put up with lots of pain or feel that it’s better to deal with the Devil you know than the Devil you don’t know.
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What is DISC and more importantly how can it benefit computer consultants in their quest to promote the new managed service model in the market place? First DISC stands for:

We at MSP Telemarketing were aware of DISC assessments; but had forgotten about them until MSPU mentioned them again at one of their recent boot camps. 
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Right now there are two competing concepts for pricing managed services.  Value based pricing and commodity based pricing.  Both can be good models, depending on what you’re trying to accomplish and what types of resources are available to your technology firm.

The main question we are going to ask is: How does IT lead generation factor into your decision of which pricing model you want to use for your computer consultants marketing?
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Should you use incentives when attempting to set technology telemarketing appointments?

Common logic and many computer services marketing consultants would say that offering an incentive to a telephone prospect would water down the lead or incite people who have no real interest in managed services into an appointment just to get that incentive and in the process totally waste the sales reps time.
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