MSP sales
MSP Sales 

MSP Sales Approach to Guide Customers in Their Decision-Making

Bill Hogan , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

MSP salesIf your MSP sales team leads your high-quality leads along their buyers’ journey only to be bogged down in the final steps, then prescriptive selling could be the solution. Many times, buyers have trouble making a final decision because they’re overwhelmed with the complex, large amount of information they’ve gathered about your services. With so much data and information, they just can’t commit because of the risks and abundance of choices. At this point, your sales team needs to simplify the buying process for your buyers.

Benefits of Prescriptive Selling

Prescriptive selling is all about building relationships with your customers and guiding them to an educated decision that is beneficial to both of you. This approach allows you to modify your MSP sales process and increase the value of your business.

By coaching your customers in their decision-making, you guide them past their fears of commitment and any other roadblocks that concern them. This separates you from the competition because you’re minimizing the confusion your customers have about all their options, which strengthens your brand and builds trusting relationships with your customers.

Guide Buyers through the Decision-Making Process

Using a prescriptive approach, guide your buyers through the sale by focusing on one decision problem at a time. Analyze each problem by its usefulness for each buyer’s business. Try to simplify the information, lending insights into all aspects of the problem. The following process can help you analyze your customers’ decision roadblocks in an open and honest way:

  • Identify the problem – Work with your buyers to identify the problem and if it can be divided into smaller problems. If there is more than one decision-maker, find out if they have common concerns about the issue. Discuss what they need to solve the problem.
  • Determine common goals – Identify the common objectives of the decision-making process. Determine what your buyers hope to achieve by using your services. Make sure your buyers understand the problem-solving criteria so you can reach a decision that is good for everyone concerned.
  • Offer alternatives – Brainstorm all the alternatives you can come up with and the outcome each one could have. Walk your customers through the alternatives, finding one that is a good fit for them and alleviates the risk factors that worries them.
  • Close the deal – Once you guide your customers along their journey, alleviating their concerns with alternatives that get them past the roadblocks, you should be able to close the deal.
  • Follow up – Always follow up with your customers after you make the sale. Ask them if they’re satisfied with the services they received. Also, find out what they thought about the steps you used to guide them to the decision-making stage. Each of your customers will respond in different ways, so be willing to change your prescriptive sales approach to increase its effectiveness according to the needs of your individual customers.

By taking the time to engage your customers, guiding them along their buyer’s journey, you build trusting relationships with them. In fact, prescriptive selling is often called relationship selling. When your MSP sales team strengthens relationships with your customers, they’re forming long-term bonds which result in loyal customers that refer your business to others.

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Bill Hogan

Bill Hogan is President of Partners Plus. A fast growing IT Support firm based in the Philadelphia area. Bill has been helping make life with business computers easier since 1981. His education as an Electrical Engineer at Penn State started a dual approach toward gaining expertise in both programming and computer networks. In 1991 he formed Partners Plus, Inc., to provide managed IT services to companies in the Philadelphia metropolitan area, based on being a business operations ally and understanding the need to speak to company leaders in plain English rather than ‘techno-babble’. And while others tend to focus their attention on the mechanical components of a computer system, Bill and his staff take a more global approach - how a network can be best used as an integral, reliable asset to the business owner’s goals. In 2007, after years of frustration with the sub-standard services he saw during network audits, Bill published “Hassle Free Computer Support” to educate business owners with the information they need to get superior technical support for their businesses A firm believer in keeping current with advances in technology and processes, Bill lead Partners Plus to become a Microsoft Certified Partner in 1998 and a Gold Certified Partner in 2008. And, Partners Plus Inc. has been selected by Microsoft as being in the top 1% of Partners serving the Small and Medium Business Market on the East Coast. Bill is internationally certified in Network Operations and is certified by Microsoft in project management and multiple Microsoft technologies. He also held the position of representative for the Mid-Atlantic region on Microsoft’s Advisory Board which manages all Microsoft Small Business certified partners. Partners Plus provides managed it services to clients in Philadelphia and the Delaware Valley and helps them choose, implement, and manage IT and cloud solutions that are cost effective and reliable. Partners Plus’ pro-active approach to IT support is ideally suited for companies in Wilmington, Delaware or Philadelphia who depend on reliable IT infrastructure, but don’t want to spend a lot of money to keep your IT services in Delaware that way. Partners Plus clients have come to appreciate the Partners Plus team focus on operations and the ability to get the core of problems quickly, and the knowledge of how to resolve issues as quickly as possible. With the institution of the Partners Plus Protection Program, the company can now monitor, identify and resolve many network issues in minutes without coming onsite.