If you have ever pick up the phone to make some cold calls for your computer business then you have probably made contact with tons of people that were rude.   They will hang up on you or try to rush you through your presentation by saying, “Get to the point”.  Sometimes you might think that these people just woke up on the wrong side of the bed.  Many conclude that there are some people that you just can’t sale and so the goals is to just keep calling until you reach someone that is in a good mood.  However, is it possible to transform someone that seems to have a bad bedside manner magically into a Pollyanna that is positive and chipper?  If this is possible then it would mean that you could make far less calls and get more IT sales leads. (more…)

We have all probably heard of the term of being your own worst enemy which means that while you believe  you are putting all your energy working towards a certain goal, you are actually doing certain things that are sabotaging your IT sales leads.  This condition is a reality and it would be terrible if you discovered that this was happening with your IT marketing efforts.  However, I have seen that many computer consultants are in fact putting up their own road blocks in their sales efforts.  In other words they are taking steps in their marketing that they believe will help them win new clients but they are actually having the opposite effect.  They are really running off their prospect at the point of a gun barrel! (more…)

Succesful cold calling is like trying to drive an engine.  There are several key ingredients that you need to get an engine operating correctly so that it will drive you to your destination.  Of course, you have to have a working engine with all the pistons and moving parts in sync.  However, before that working engine will go anywhere it must be fueled up with gas.  Finally, once you have fueled up your working engine, then you will need one more key component to make sure you can make it all the way to your goal without having the engine seize up.  The last thing you must have is a properly lubricated engine with plenty of oil.  I will describe how these three components compare to the telemarketing process as you try to get more IT sales leads for your managed services business.

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To send or not to send meeting invites is the question we would like to discuss.  Of course, the real issue hiding behind this question is how can a managed services provider make sure they don’t get stood up on their sales meetings.  The issues involved in this question would center around whether sending a marketing meeting invite will help or hurt your chances of having a successful meeting.  On one hand some might think that when a prospect gets an email message allowing them to accept or decline the meeting, that this would make it too easy for them to decline the meeting.  This would mean that you would lose an excellent opportunity for marketing your IT services.  On the flip side some believe that this will remind the prospect about the meeting they agreed to and since it will be added to their calendar this will only strengthen your chances for a good meeting.  Which side is correct? (more…)

Many sales consultants advise  professional managed services providers to warm up their prospect’s in the first sales meeting.  Of course, this means you’re trying to break the ice between you and the prospect while building rapport.  The big question though is how much time should you dedicate to warming up the prospect in your marketing meetings?  Some of the experts will tell you that you should use the entire first meeting to build rapport with your prospect.  Others may feel that using 15 minutes of your time is the correct balance in your IT  marketing process.  Is it possible to actually use too much rapport building to the point that you turn off your potential customer? (more…)

I don’t want to keep beating a dead horse with this same topic but every time I turn around I meet another computer consultant that has made a poor decision about IT lead generation based solely on price.  Of course, the worst thing that could happen is that you wait 3 months and end up not getting any Leads at all.  However, the other possibility is that you do get all your appointments but they end up being trash leads.  This means they are the left overs that nobody else wants for their IT marketing.  In this scenario you do end up meeting with all the prospects but the type of leads are not desirable or really in the target market where there might actually end up buying a managed services contract.  Exactly what are garbage appointments and how can you avoid getting stuck with them the next time you conduct a marketing campaign?

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I talk with over 15 to 30 managed services providers each week.  When I ask how many IT sales leads they get a month the answers I get are all over the map.  For the most part I don’t hear from many tech firms that tell me they get more than 10 ‘qualified’ leads each month.  However, every once in a while I do get some computer consultants that say they get more leads from word-of-mouth or from Internet leads.  This is a fundamental issue as it goes to the very core of deciding how to spend your IT marketing budget to grow your sales.  If a computer consultant can get more than 10 ‘qualified’ leads that have pain and a need then this would be a game changer.  I would love to get a great discussion going on how many technology sales leads each company gets and from what source!

I firmly believe that most businesses are happy with what they have in place when it comes to IT support and are not looking on the Internet or asking for referrals in very large numbers.  So I would love to hear from techs that are getting more that 10 per month in only one local market and not nationwide. (more…)

I know we live in an instant society where we expect everything we desire to come immediately.  However, there are some things that we can’t rush and we still have to patiently wait on.  Unfortunately one of the things we still have to wait for is a managed services sale to close.  There is an average sale cycle ‘delay’ that last, from the beginning of the IT marketing process to the close of an IT sales lead, for about 3 to 4 months.  This Lag time requires that the computer business correctly forecast their marketing investment to avoid huge gaps in the sales pipeline.  If you want a sale now then you should have started months ago and if you know you will need sales in the next few months then there should be urgency to start your IT services marketing NOW! (more…)

Recently I have been approached by several computer business owners that have asked me to work for free to generate IT sales leads for them until they make a sale and then they would pay our company commission.  While I can see why a business would like to only pay when they make sales to keep their IT marketing cost down, can this type of arrangement ever really work out?  The real question that should be considered would be, is there  anybody willing to do telemarketing that might be able to work for free until an account is sold?  The second question that should be asked by everyone involved is whether the commissions will actually be paid out once the sales are made and will they keep being paid out (more…)

When a computer business owner has decided to save money on IT sales leads by bringing inside sales in-house, the other big issue that needs to be consider is who’s going to coach and managed the inside marketing agents?  Once you have hired someone to make outbound calls for you then they will need to be coached and managed.  If the correct training is in place then someone in your company will have to coach your telemarketers to success.  Some important questions you might want to ask before moving forward would be, who is going to be the coach and what type of coaching will be required.  More importantly before you decide to in-source IT services marketing take a minute to consider what sort of time investment will be required. (more…)