There is a problem in the MSP industry today. When business owners say marketing, they expect people to be beating down their doors begging for them to present a quote. That’s just not reality. Our prospects want to search for an MSP about as much as they want to have to find a plumber because their drain is clogged. At the end of the day, to our prospects, a technology service agreement is more of a necessary evil than a desired purchase.

So, what does that mean? We all stop our marketing, skulk back to our offices, and wait for someone to give us a referral like we always have? Absolutely not! We have to get out there and engage in a different way.

It’s time to call MSP Marketing by a better name: sales enablement. In today’s day and age, content is a dime a dozen, website templates abound, social media posting can be found on every corner. Within the MSP space there are literally dozens of companies, consultants, and others that will spin up marketing content for you. In all reality, all of that is just permission to play.

Where the rubber hits the road is what you do with all of that content. How do you use it to initiate a relevant, timely conversation with a legitimate call to action? At CharTec, we follow a very simple prescription and it’s specifically designed to reach out to the right people at the right time with the right script to close on a first appointment.

How?

We score every marketing activity. Click on a link within an email – there’s some points. Surf different pages on the websites – more points. Visit a downloadable resource page (whether you fill out the form to download or not, only 3% of people ever do) – still more points. When a prospect hits a minimum threshold, alarm bells go off, trigger a hot lead report, and then we dive into their recent click history. Based on that history, we craft our call script around specifically what they’re interested in, do some Google stalking of the individual and the company and make a call.

Here’s an example. Prospect clicked on a link in a Windows End of Life email that took them to a blog. Within that blog, there are links to two more blogs and a resource with a Windows End of Life resource (side note: this exact example is available on our CharTec CORE site). They click on all those links. Think the prospect may be interested in Windows EOL? Perhaps it may be worth a call? We believe so and so does our lead scoring system!

The call goes something like this, “Hi, Mr. Prospect, with the quickly approaching Windows 7 end of life date, many of our clients are choosing to upgrade to avoid problems that we’ve seen utilizing outdated hardware and software. I wanted to see if it made sense for us to have a conversation too. Are you the right person or is there someone else that I should be talking to about a technology upgrade?”

Ta-da! First appointment! Now, there is absolutely one critical step that is worth talking about here. Did we rest on our laurels and wait for the prospect to call us saying they were interested in an upgrade? NO! We wrote solid content, put it out there in a blog, email and resource; and then we monitored, measured and, most importantly, ACTED based on a prospect’s behavior!

It’s time to get out of the mindset that content Marketing is going to rain leads from the sky without any effort. Sales Enablement is where it’s at. Equipping salespeople to make the right call, at the right time, with the right script to maximize first appointments, generate ROI and minimize frustration.

Need some sales enablement professionals on your side? Hit us up. We’ve got the prescription waiting for you.