If you’re starting up a new computer business and marketing to businesses then in many ways your situation parallels that of the early Pioneers.

While the promise of becoming rich from reoccurring revenue in the IT industry is plastered all over the internet, it’s important to be warned of the dangers you may face from savage Indians and a barren land.

The truth is that MSP Pioneers get the Arrows, read this and be prepared!

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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! (more…)

Envelopes have not changed in over few hundred years and therefore the techniques used by master salespeople like Harvey Mackay focus on timing, personalities and relationship building.  Many computer business owners have been influenced into thinking that selling their managed services offering is also just about their personality, timing and relationship building.  In fact, I have seen some websites that promote  the idea that IT guys should sell just based on their personality alone!  While I am not against these methods, by any stretch of the imagination, I believe that trying to sell computer support just on these basis alone is a huge oversight.  The reason is because technology is a very different animal than envelopes, while envelops have not changed technology on the other hand is the very essence of change itself.  Therefore we ask, what are the other techniques that can be employed for marketing? (more…)

Imagine you’re lost in a scorching desert and your mouth is bone dry as the sun beats down on you.  All you can think about is getting some water when suddenly the heat exhaustion over comes you to the point that you begin to hallucinate a beautiful Oasis off in the distant sand dunes.  You race over to the Oasis and begin to excitedly ’splash’ water into your mouth until you realize, as you choke on sand, that this was just a mirage.  This is very similar to what managed services providers often experience as they search for more IT sales leads that have pain through various marketing strategies.  Most business owners don’t realize that there isn’t more prospects that have become fed up with their existing technology services, until after that conducted extensive search campaigns.  Some computer consultants are still chasing after this Mirage. (more…)

Recently several of our computer consultants clients have question the benefit of HAAS with CharTec after adding up the cost of the financing.  Below are my thoughts about why HAAS is critical to your marketing success as a computer business owner

How much will the average person pay for a car or home after the financing is added to the cost?

If every one cringed about the financing cost then our society’s spending would shrink and so would the economy.  Like in Mexico where pretty much every one pays for homes and cars with cash and really only rich people buy anything.

Perhaps there could be an argument that that might be a better arrangement, it would also mean there would be less millionaires because there would be less cash blowing around for entrepreneurs to grab.
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MSP Telemarketing is proud to announce our first Blog Talk Radio show.  We will be talking about issues that are relevant to computer services marketing  firms.  Our first guest on our very first Radio Show will be Frank Gurnee the Vice President of VAR Channel Sales for CharTec.

Of Course we will be talking about IT lead generation, IT telemarketing and technology telemarketing but well will be focusing on discussing Hardware as a Services or HaaS with CharTec.  This is a new model for marketing for IT that is taking off  and CharTec is the leader in this industry.  (more…)

Asking questions is one of the most effective ways to prospect for new computer services clients.  In your IT telemarketing efforts, you should be training your salesmen or appointment setters to ask the prospects the right questions at the right time.  What are the right computer consultants marketing questions?

The first Question that technology telemarketing should ask a decision maker is: “Could I have a moment of you time?”  By asking this question you are complimenting your prospect  by inferring that they are important because you know they are busy.  Asking this question will go against the instincts of most salespeople and marketers but if you follow this advice you will find that most decision makers will agree to give you an initial 30 seconds.  Furthermore, by asking this question you will have gotten your prospects attention and can be confident that they will be listening to your IT marketing elevator pitch.

Next you need to understand what IT situation your prospect currently has and how they are handling it.  For Example, do they have a full time IT employee or have they contracted with a computer consultant to managed their technology.  Also, you want to try to find out what type of backup service they have in place.  You can try to query how many computers they have on their network and how many servers.  If you don’t asked these question then you will not be able to offer a recommendation or ask for an appointment.  One time I actually had a prospect ask me when I tried a close prematurely, “How could you propose any thing if you don’t know what we have in place?”  Needless to say we lost that opportunity.

Once you get the technology questions out of the way, now you want  find out what they know about managed services.  You just have to ask, “Have you heard of managed services before?”  “If you have heard of managed services have you ever gotten a proposal?”  You don’t want to go into a big presentation and waste your prospect time if they already know what managed services is.  Then if they don’t know what it is you can go into a brief description but now you have aroused their curiosity.

One of the best questions that can set up a close latter on is, “When was the last time you reviewed your IT or compared services?”  If it has been a while you should be able to effectively make the case that since the market has gotten more competitive and the technology has improved that it might be wise to do a review.

These are just some of the Key question that you can use to probe and  find qualified prospects for your computer services marketing. If you start using these question then you will be more effective in your IT lead generation.

Check out our partners: CharTec, Synergy, Kaseya, E-Folder and MSPU

“Just cancel our IT appointment!” - If you’re calling to confirm your appointments the day of your technology marketing meeting, then you’re probably hearing those word more often. When this happens the first thought that comes to your mind is that telemarketing must have set a bogus lead.

This could be false cause, let’s consider if we should confirm managed services leads or not and if so when. Should we jump to the conclusion that because you called to confirm an appointment the day of the meeting or the day before and the prospect cancels your meeting, that telemarketing set up a bad lead? (more…)

In today’s ever-changing and complex high tech environments, Synergy delivers complete technology solutions “synergistic-ally”.  It includes diverse areas such as help desk, infrastructure management and on-site support.

In the present scenario, computer consultants require relationships with a whole host of IT solutions providers, each offering their own area of functionality in a specialized area. (more…)

As an IT automation framework, Kaseya permits IT computer services consultants to proactively maintain, manage and monitor distributed technology infrastructures efficiently, easily and remotely with a single integrated web related platform.

By offering computer consultants an integrated and complete view of environments from the centralized web related management console, the IT automation framework of Kaseya streamlines a scalable and consistent process of managed services. (more…)