Closing Strategies to Make Your MSP Sales Pitches More Effective
Your MSP sales efforts are useless if they continually lead you to the threshold of conversion, but you find you aren’t allowed through. That “sales close door” needs to be opened! First and foremost, if you’re going to close, you need to recognize when you’re at the point of closure. From there, you need a strategy that will help finish the process with the greatest level of smoothness for both involved parties. Following are three basic closing techniques:
- A Subtle “Assumptive” Close
- The “Clock Is Ticking” Approach
- A Carefully Crafted Custom Close
A Subtle “Assumptive” Close
MSP sales strategies which employ an assumptive close can be successful, but this must be done right. Here’s what an assumptive close would look like: “When would you like us to ship product X to you?”, or “When would you like us to help you start your migration to the cloud?”. You see the trend? Instead of asking for the close, the seller is assuming the client wants the products or services and asking a question which is designed to make closure just another step toward their goal.
The downside to this method is that: sometimes, prospects will tune into it, and you may incidentally insult them. Be cautious that you understand the kind of prospect you’re dealing with before using the assumptive close.
The “Clock Is Ticking” Approach
This technique puts pressure on the prospect. Limited-time-only sales are of the “clock is ticking” close kind. These can initiate a conversion, but they might rebuff a client. When you’re using this technique, you need to use it as a response to someone who you can tell would clearly benefit from your services and is interested; but just isn’t quite sure. If you do it right, you’ll have a conversion on your hands. If you do it wrong, they’ll think of you as a pushy MSP, and you may never get the chance again.
If you’re going with this approach, it may make sense to have a kind of promotion promulgated through your marketing channels beforehand. You may want to make the limitations on that promotion slightly porous–you’ll “stretch” them for the “right client”. Or, depending on your services, you may want to be ironclad in promotional deal limits. It all depends on how well your MSP is doing. Planning it out beforehand will always produce better results.
A Carefully Crafted Custom Close
This is the best option. What you do is ask probing questions designed to get an idea of the client’s needs. What you’re going to do from here is lead them into an “ask” for services which matches the provisions you had already intended to sell. You make it appear, through skillful selling, as though you’ve “customized” a package for the client. If you can swing it, you may actually customize packages; but oftentimes, this isn’t feasible. Find which method best fits your selling practices.
Increased Conversions
An MSP sales campaign that employs strategic, known closure techniques is more likely to see a statistically marked increase in sales conversions. If you haven’t designed strategies of approach for sales closure, now is the time that you should.
