Sales Process for Managed Services

[CITEComputers]

Hey everyone,

(For some reason I don't have access to the Managed Services forum. But this relates more to sales, than specifics to managed services, anyways.)

First post, outside of my intro post! I've been a lurker for a long time and have been listening to the podcasts / reading the blogs here for even longer. About 6 months ago I opened a computer, cell phone, tablet and game console repair shop. Things were pretty slow in the beginning, and to be honest that part of the business is still very slow. I spent about $5000 on advertising in the first 2 months and got literally 2 customers in return. I'm not on the busiest road in town, but I'm definitely on one of the busiest. But anyways...

A series of events lead me to start focusing more on business support and I noticed that there were no proper MSP's in the area. Just break/fix shops. So I developed a plan and shifted the company focus to Managed Services. I still do some walk-in computer repair, but it is by no means our bread and butter and we aren't even really trying to get those customers in anymore. The people walking in the door are existing customers, referrals or old customers that found out I've opened a store and want me to repair their stuff.

So on to the real subject: Selling managed services.

There doesn't seem to be any easy way about this, when it comes to advertising and selling. I have a salesman and we literally just walk in the door and start talking to business owners. For the most part this has been successful for us. We've got in to see some of the more prominent business owners/managers in town (it helps that we're the only real MSP in the area, so it's a brand new concept here and it is VERY interesting to business owners). We've been in talks with 2 of the top-5 largest employers in town (5,000 and 15,000 devices, respectively). So we're doing good there. But, where the issue arises is CLOSING the sale. Here's our process:

1. Get a meeting with the owner or decision maker for a sales presentation. This can be troublesome, but we're pretty successful with this. We have not had a single bad response to the services we are offering and most people are blown away by the capabilities of managed services, when compared to what is normal around this area.
2. Do a network evaluation. Our pricing is device-based. So we do a free network evaluation to get a count of devices and so we can see if there's any ongoing issues on the network (old devices, virus infections, etc.), this will tell us what we need to do for an onboarding fee (if anything) and a monthly fee. We try to do step 1 and 2 in the same visit, if they have time. So far, all of them have. During this visit we schedule another meeting for 24-48 hours out, so we can present a formal proposal.
3. We put together a proposal for the customer and present it to the client. This is usually a 4-8 page Word document, where we analyze the needs of the customer, their current situation, and how we plan to remedy their issues and improve their situation. At this time we also present all pricing and timelines for deployment/onboarding.
4. Signing of the agreements. We have a Managed Services Agreement and a separate SLA. If the customer accepts the proposal we sign the agreements and begin deployment of services, etc.

Between #3 and #4 is where we have our issues. Nobody has had a bad reaction to our pricing. In fact, everyone has had very positive responses to our prices and proposals. In general, the responses we get from all aspects of our process, are positive. But it seems to take FOREVER to get the final decision. I'm not talking days or weeks. I'm talking months. We have one customer that we have been working with and having various meetings for about 3 months now.

We currently have 4 customers that are in between step #3 and #4. The times they've spent there range from 1 week to 3 months. Although, the "1 week" client has told us it will be mid-December before a decision can be made. The problem usually revolves around them needing to get a board of directors, a finance committee or some other entity involved in the decision.

One of our customers had a major turnover of staff just after our proposal and the people who we presented too left the company. Setting us back to square one with the new staff. Another client has a son who is critically ill. So it's just a series of unfortunate events in some cases, and in other cases it is a legitimate process that our clients must go through to get approval for funds to pay for our services.

So my question here is, is there anything we can do to help speed up the sales process? Is there something inherently wrong with the process we are going through?

Any tips and/or advice are MUCH appreciate.

 

[altrenda]

I don't think it's overly long, especially for a client you are not already doing business with. No one likes to spend money, no one wants to be responsible for spending money that doesn't have a clear ROI, and its usually not a high priority unless they are having a lot of problems.

I Iearned in my sales career that it usually takes around 5 visits to make a sale, and most people give up after 3. You have to be persistent without being annoying, and make sure you're talking with the person with the biggest stake in getting it done.

 

[CITEComputers]

I don't think it's overly long, especially for a client you are not already doing business with. No one likes to spend money, no one wants to be responsible for spending money that doesn't have a clear ROI, and its usually not a high priority unless they are having a lot of problems.

I Iearned in my sales career that it usually takes around 5 visits to make a sale, and most people give up after 3. You have to be persistent without being annoying, and make sure you're talking with the person with the biggest stake in getting it done.

If that time frame seems appropriate, then we can just increase the number of clients we are working with at once to help smooth out the rate of new customers coming in. That's fine. We just weren't expecting it. My salesman and I are both experienced in the IT industry, but we aren't all that experienced with selling larger contracts of this nature.

Thanks for the input.

 

[Kitten Kong]

Hey everyone,

(For some reason I don't have access to the Managed Services forum. But this relates more to sales, than specifics to managed services, anyways.)

Reason for this is, you simply have not made enough posts. Another couple, and you will be fine