One of the great pains of providers is presenting their IT services to customers, which directly impacts the difficulty in proving their value. In fact, many besides not being able to
One of the great pains of providers is presenting their IT services to customers, which directly impacts the difficulty in proving their value. In fact, many, in addition to not being able to present their services and value, also do not have a structured service catalog. According to the latest MSP Market Survey (ADDEE, 2020), 56% of providers do not have a structured service catalog, which makes the presentation meeting more difficult.
In this sense, it is important to emphasize that from the presentation material to the catalog, the language must be easy to understand for the end-user, that is, your client.
We routinely receive requests for ADDEE to produce a presentation template that MSPs can use with end customers. In fact, our CEO and Founder, Rodrigo Gazola, started to ask himself if we should develop this presentation model for MSPs.
After all, is there an IT service presentation model?
Rodrigo says that during his 25 years as an IT service provider, partly as an MSP, he constantly felt the need to have material both to deliver to future clients and to send an email.
In this sense, to help MSPs, we are making available for download the latest materials from our CEO’s former company, click here to download. Rodrigo says that they invested time and money to produce it and that, of course, if the time dedicated to producing the material were billed at the MO value, the value would be considerable.
This content is intended to share Rodrigo Gazola’s experience and suggest an alternative to the material to be produced. After all, like many providers, Rodrigo also believed that with marketing material, he would win more customers.
Marketing material should not be the focus
While the material is important, it will not be the content, language, or design that will win over a new customer. Because customers are interested in how you can solve and avoid their problems.
Therefore, good material that explores excellent IT solutions and services, but does not relate to the customer’s reality, does not generate results. In addition, it is impossible for a single material to reach the pain of all customers.
Rodrigo Gazola shares his experience as an IT service provider
Rodrigo says that the last material they developed was a folder with some printed sheets that were used in face-to-face visits and as there were not so many visits, the customers who received them were already attracted to the solutions and the material was not necessary.
In addition, there was also a digital PDF version that was not used much, as many did not even pay attention to the material. Our CEO says that in his days as an IT service provider, most customers were won through referrals, visits, and consultative sales based on customer needs.
In the beginning, the effort was directed at improving the material for non-customers. However, it was realized that this was a costly process and did not bring good results, which led to the conclusion that it was more advantageous to optimize materials for customers in order to give better feedback, improve relationships and make new sales to the same customer. . See below:
- Version A: Text, there were three slides talking about the company’s history, technology, objectives, services, and products, and at the time the main focus was hardware. In addition, two slides contained information about the services, click here to download them.
- Version B: Text, four slides with institutional content, about services, a proactive package that was the name of the managed service, and content filter – a Draytek solution was used, click here to download.
However, if you’ve been following us for a while, you know that our CEO’s passion is back up and you might be wondering where that blade is, but backup as a service only emerged as a service in 2013.
The Importance of Quarterly Meetings ( QBRs )
In 2012, the company adopted the practice of holding quarterly meetings with clients (QBRs) and producing materials for these meetings. Surprisingly, this material became marketing material for both new customers and prospects.
But remember that quarterly meetings are not focused on numerical demonstration, such as the number of tickets, hours, problems, resolutions, etc. These metrics must be measured internally, during QBR it is important to show the customer how you are ensuring that IT is a competitive differentiator in their business, you must be seen as a business partner.
Materials can become commercial arguments
The onboarding material started to be used by the company as a commercial argument. This material pointed out the shortcomings of the prospect’s network and which points should be improved if the service was hired. For this, the company created a table (inspired by the Microsoft Framework for infrastructure), which contained a sequence of items that needed to be met based on infrastructure classifications such as reactive, proactive, managed, etc.
Example: Backup that serves 3x2x1; licensed and monitored AV; Licensed and secure access. Below is the material used in the quarterly meetings:
- QBR Material: Delivered at the first meeting, no later than 10 days after the service is provided, click here to download.
As a result, they also started to offer non-customers a free diagnosis of the infrastructure as a way to understand the deficiencies and further improve consultative selling, presenting a proposal based on the problems encountered. See the material used below:
- Diagnostic Material: Sent to prospects in the free trial, click here to download.
A good onboarding yields good success cases
Rodrigo recognizes that much of the effort that was initially invested in marketing for IT would bring more results if it were invested in the materials used during the meetings. After all, based on his experience, the materials did not bring new customers and the best strategy adopted was the QBRs, which boosted the development of good onboarding. Thus, the company achieved good success cases that were used in its materials, bringing great results.
Finally, we hope to have helped with suggestions and models, as well as, of course, reporting the experience and opinion of our CEO, Rodrigo Gazzola. We advise everyone who hasn’t done QBR yet, to start as soon as possible.
