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?

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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?  (more…)

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?

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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?

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What if your favorite sports team was only able to win 4 out of 5 games? Or if your favorite player was only able to score four times out of the five times they shot the ball?  In sports these type of statistics would be amazing and the fans would be just as ecstatic as the guy in the picture to the right.  In fact even the great Michael Jordan never won every game he played in.  I raise these questions to consider the expectations that many computer business owners have with their IT marketing.  If every single IT sales lead campagin doesn’t deliever a sold account then they often just pull the plug.  So the question we are asking is should every single campaign be expected to deliver a sold managed services account?

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It occurred to me the other day that every business for the most part has their door open for new opportunities but has closed the door for new IT marketing vendors.  I started meditating on this and thought about what would happen if this became a chain reaction through all the markets from the manufactures, wholesalers and retailers.  If every marketing department found that the doors for selling to all potential customers had been closed permanently, then this would reverberate through and suddenly nothing would every be sold again.  In fact the other day a computer business owner told me he paid someone to make sure no vendors every got through to him; but yet he wanted to make sure we could  force the doors open to other companies for IT marketing.  However, why might tech providers want to keep their doors open to new vendors and how might this impact IT services marketing? (more…)

That might sound like a strange question, but I came up with it when I was on my soap box preaching to some computer business prospects that they will need a better IT services model to make sure they can close sales, when they conduct their marketing campaign.  This is because the average prospect we are able to set appointments with are willing to keep their options open; but are currently satisfied with their tech support.  Without a better offer it will be difficult to get them to consider switching.  The question that prompted this blog was, “How will we know when we get the lead, if we have a better offer than what the prospect has in-place?”   My answer was that you need to be the Apex Predator in your local market, so you never have to ask that question!  How can you make sure you’re the Apex predator? (more…)

When your favorite sports team hits the field normally, if you a fan, then you are hoping for a big victory on behalf of your city.  With all the coverage of the local sports team, no doubt you are aware of who the players are that will be on the starting line up.  However, imagine for a second that this was a total mystery and you had no idea who it was that was going to be representing your city in the sports game.  The team could hype up the team and how amazing they are but hire anyone off the street.  No matter how good the teams performance had been in the past, if you didn’t know who was going to be playing in the next game then all bets would be off.  However, this is exactly what many managed services providers do every day when they invest in IT services marketing without knowing who will actually be making their calls in the campaign.  I think this really focuses attention on the heart of the matter.  Technology telemarketing is about talent not how many hours you’ve purchased.  It’s also not about how cheap you can negotiate your contract or how much you can squeeze out of the IT marketing firm. (more…)

If you have every watched any old cowboy and Indian movies then you have seen that the Indians always put on warpaint before attacking any of their enemies.  As a child the Indians always fascinated me, especially the way they used warpaint in battles.  I always wondered what the importance of the paint was and it’s relevance to battle.  Over the years I have come up with a few theories about what the meaning was behind it’s use.  Are there any benefits that might be applicable in business  if the power of the warpaint was understood?   Now I wonder how the power of ‘warpaint’ might be used by computer business owners in IT marketing.

Should the salesman for computer consulting firms start painting their faces with ‘warpaint’ before heading out on IT sales leads?  Should IT telemarketing agents start marking their faces up with brilliant colors before making hundreds of out-bound calls from an IT call center?  For that matter should we start wearing skins and donning headdresses arrayed with feathers?  Well let’s not get carried away just yet before we try to understand the simple power behind wearing warpaint and deciding if there really is any useable application to business. (more…)