So, you think you can sell managed services?

You’ve worked in the IT industry for X number of years and during that time, you probably think that you’ve seen it all. You’re confident in the knowledge of your products and how to make even the most stubborn of prospects see their value as well.

Let me guess, your sales process tends to go like this: You engage a customer and immediately bombard them with your solution before you’ve even heard their problem.

Then, when the customer doesn’t show an interest, you back track and try to fight off all of the alternatives.If this is how you sell, then congratulations! You’ve just engaged in SPA based selling, spilling forth your solution before addressing your prospect’s problem or their alternatives.

But let me tell you something about SPA based selling: it never works!

In my 20 plus years of working in sales and the IT industry, I can’t tell you how many sales people I’ve encountered that continue to try to make this method work. A lost managed services deal is equivalent to $72,000 going down the drain. I don’t know about you, but that amount of cash is not something I’m willing to let fall out of my hands simply because my sales team or I are not selling effectively.

That’s what drove me to write this. Since transitioning my MSP, ARRC Technology, into fully managed services back in 2007, I started on a fast track to grow to what is now $10 million a year in revenue. My experience isn’t a unique one, though. It’s one that you, too, can experience by changing up your process and tactics to approaching the sale.

From this point on, let’s consider that tired, old elevator pitch as dead and get ready to start anew. Break out the pencils and paper, and let’s get ready to get into managed services sales the right way.

To your MSP success,

Alex Rogers, CEO 
ARRC Technology & CharTec

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The MSP sales process isn’t necessarily the same for every prospect however, it does follow a general pattern. Here at CharTec, we have spent over a decade perfecting our award winning sales process and have had thousands of managed service professionals attend our very own MSP training bootcamp, ACADEMY. It is the repeated success of our ACADEMY attendees implementing our managed services sales process in their own operation that validates our process and drives us to share with anyone seeking a better solution to closing more deals.

If followed in sequence every time, these 5 steps are a sure fire way of increasing your close ratio and burning fewer leads generated by the your managed services marketing message. Each step in the process sets up a piece in your sales funnel and mirrors one of the 5 Most Important Closes for a Managed Service deal, which is covered in more depth by clicking this link: CharTec’s 5 Steps To A Managed Services Sale.

This article is the first in a series of six articles where we will go over each step. Our goal in publishing this information is to help tech companies transition from break-fix services to managed services and ultimately drive more sales to the MSP.

See the outline for this series below: