In the Greek legends the Titans ruled supreme until Cronus became fearful he would lose power and started making some bad decisions, namely eating his children. It was foretold through a muse that one of his children would seize power from him and the rest of the Titans. Perhaps this became a self fulfilling prophecy but either way Zeus lead the Olympians into battle and defeated the Titans, banishing them to Tartarus. The message here is that if you’re on Top then you have to be very careful because there is always someone gunning for your position from behind. In the case of the data backup world the current Titan is under attack from the new Olympians on the block, Axcient!
With out naming any names, the current title holder for selling BDRs in the managed services channel has taken some missteps of late. Whether this has transpired as a result of over confidence by trying to take on too much or just simply because they took their eyes off the IT marketing and operations ball, I can’t say for sure. What I do know for sure is that no god, country or company can stay on top forever. The evolution of the markets is inevitable but the question that I propose is if and when a seismic shift might take place leaving the Olympians ruling the data backup world and banishing the Titans? (more…)
We have probably all seen some movie or TV show where there is either a tent revival flim flam man or a traveling snake oil sales man that puts on a hoax by having a grifter pretend they were cured by either the healing or the elixir. Perhaps the grifter dramatically stands up out of their wheel chair or releases their crutches and exclaims, “I Can Walk!“ When other people watching the show see how this person was miraculously healed then they start forking over their money to the matchstick men.
It was once a wartime strategy to stealthily poison your enemies water supply at it’s source and thereby defeat your adversaries without having to fire a shot. Later this term was used for another type of battle that was fought with words instead of weapons and that was debating. You could proverbial poison the well of ideas of your opponent by making false claims or ad hominem attacks about them and turning everybody away from their beliefs. This is exactly what has happened to the concept of using outsourced telemarketing to help grow a computer business. Some IT companies have tried telemarketing and failed so they are spreading vitriolic poison around the industry. The real issue to consider is if the isolated experiences of these people should cause every other technology firm to rule out using telemarketing for IT marketing. Another question that’s worth considering is what might be the root cause of those failures that have caused so much consternation?
It’s a common expression that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks but what about teaching a computer consultant new IT marketing techniques? The old ways that I am talking about are the tried and true method of selling prospects by conducting a needs assessment, where you try to identify pain points. This is the approach that just about every IT guy is familiar with and for the most part they are very skillful at squeezing out the very last drop of issues and problems that a business which in pain is having. The question that we are asking is how difficult is it to take the average managed services provider and teach them new sales techniques that put them out of their comfort zone? The technique I am referring to is the ability to sell to a business that doesn’t have any immediate pain. 
We have all seen the scene in the movies where the ‘deal’ is about to go down where one shady party has the money in a silver brief case and the other party has the ‘goods’ in their brief case, either secrets or some other illegal contraband. Of course, in most cases since neither party trust the other the question arises as to who exactly is going to be the first to hand over their case to the other party and wait to get back what he wants in exchange. Many times these exchanges in the Movies end with one side killing the other and taking both brief cases. So how easy is it to make the same switch in the managed services sales process? The switch we are discussing is where you have a proposal that the IT sales prospect wants, but they have the network audit information that you want. This is where the marketing standoff usually begins and this ’switch’ almost never ends up happening! 
Recently I was asked by a computer consultant if we made any attempt to develop pain points on our outbound cold calls to end users. The question seemed so strange that it took me a while to process and come up with a logical answer. This question arose after we discussed the fact that most businesses are happy with what they have when it comes to computer support. As a result we assume in our call scripts that our prospects are happy with what they have, before they have a chance to object and instead we have stated something they can agree with. So I had to try and think about what might happen if we dropped that approach and instead start trying to develop some pain points on our IT marketing calls. This would mean asking all the C-level decision makers if they have any problems with their current provider. The question that we are raising is what would the effect be on the average contact if we took that approach? Would we find more IT services appointments with prospects that had actually pain or problems or could it have the complete opposite effect that was intended and cause us to end with far less marketing leads? 
Athletes that have a burning desire to win normally practice every part of their game until they have mastered each skill. One example is a tennis pro that wants to have the best serve in the world so he get tons of tennis balls and serves them over and over again until the entire tennis court is littered with tennis balls. Most of us would never think that any athlete would never practice for an important game and just take the match casually instead of seriously. Is this the type of attitude that a computer business salesman should have and is there a need for them to practice their marketing as much as an athlete preparing for the Olympics. Does the IT marketing agents have a learning curve that would require practice?
We all remember Grumpy from Snow White , no matter what happened he always saw things with a negative view. Of course, his attitude was endearing and Grumpy is perhaps one of the most beloved Dwarfs from the classic Disney movie. However, if someone displayed these same traits in the real world would they be just as well received? Now imagine a salesperson that had a Grumpy attitude, do you think he/she would be a huge hit? There is a lot of sales coaching material that focuses on how important our attitude is when it comes to selling anything, even IT services. The real question is how important is your disposition when it comes to meeting new marketing prospects? 
Our biggest competition by far for getting computer business owners to start a telemarketing campaign with us is not another marketing company or even companies deciding to bring telemarketing in-house. Actually our biggest obstacle is the inclination most computer consultants have to just kick the IT marketing decision ‘can’ down the road. In other words, they just procrastinate the decision because they can’t make a decision. I have called one company back several times thinking we had lost their account to another firm only to discover that no decision had been made and there was no sign of one being made in the near future. We had offered cased studies, references and even allowed them to listen in live to our cold calling agents, yet none of this was enough evidence to allow this MSP to have confidence to move forward. I actually had one technology firm declare that they had decided not to decide! What reasons might lie behind this anemic inability that many MSP’s have developed for choosing an it services marketing partner?
One of the first mantras I every heard when I got into IT telemarketing was, “Marketing is a numbers game”. This is the simple idea that if you dial enough people that you will find someone that is willing to buy or agree to set an appointment. This concept is often applied to the number of agents making out-bond calls, meaning the more people calling the greater you’re overall success will be. Of course there is great wisdom in those words but does success depend solely on the numbers game principal? In other words, if a computer business owner just has a large number of agents pounding the phone and contacting a large number people each day then would their success be guaranteed?
