MSP marketing of the cheaply-derived variety actually ends up costing clients’ money in the long run. When they realize this, they won’t be disillusioned about your services not being the “cheapest in town” because they’ll understand what their competitors save on the front-end by going with such solutions, they ultimately lose on the back-end. A perfect example is break-fix services.
When you’ve got a break-fix solution, it seems to be a great deal— until something breaks and you have to fix it. The reason is that proactive maintenance can prevent the breakdown and extend your technology investment. It’s the difference between changing the oil in your car every 3,000 to 5,000 miles and waiting until the engine starts smoking. You can get a car to run a good 80,000 miles and never change the oil. It’ll ruin the vehicle, but you can do it. Or, you can be part of the million mile club by continuously fixing problems as they come. You’ll get more out of your vehicular investment going the latter route, and it’s exactly the same with tech innovations. Certainly, new technology comes about at regular intervals, but oftentimes, businesses fail to maximize their investment because they’re too cheap to save money. Instead of getting twice the lifespan, they pay twice the money and think they’ve saved.
Showing the Truth to Clients
Make part of your MSP marketing approach a measure of education. You want to be professional and concise, but you definitely want to be informative. Once you’ve shown them the truth of the situation, quote them on services. It’s also helpful, in some scenarios where a client refuses to see reason, to show the services your competition fail to offer for the costs involved.
Common Services Worthy of Emphasis
With cloud computing innovations, there’s a lot of confusion. You want to clear this up as best as you can by showing the contrast between the perceived truth… and the actual truth. Many simply don’t understand what the cloud is and don’t do the research. As a result, they’ll pay thousands for an on-site server array when they could pay you for the cloud and still end up saving on a monthly basis. Here’s a prospective approach to educating potential clients:
• Demonstrate the cloud, show how you help clients migrate
• Explain proactive service: show how constant monitoring prevents disruptions and streamlines conventional usage patterns
• Offer them a single point of contact for local support— this is convenient
• Provide access to the technology expertise your MSP inherently sources— this helps when difficult choices are required
• Confidently assure them they’ll be dealing with only one vendor, and so, only one invoice
There are many tech solutions that rely on a multitude of vendors to advance services. Usually, they are of the break fix variety. While this may be desirable for those tech solutions, it’s horrible for the client. Multiple invoices are a headache for anybody. Consolidated solutions are much to be recommended.
The Cumulative Effect
Now, if you do all these things well and are upfront in all you do, it’s going to be easy for clients to see “which side of the bread is buttered,” as it were. Remember the oil change analogy, it could be useful to you. You may think you’re saving money by never changing your oil, but really, you’re just making an investment in heartburn later on.
Technological developments have been doubling at 18-month intervals in accordance with Moore’s Law for decades, but things are coming to a point where that level of upgrade may have hit an upper limit. There’s no way it ever would have gone on forever; at the very least, Planck’s Constant is an ultimate limitation. But what this means for your MSP marketing is that clients can now get greater return on their investment. Instead of completely upgrading systems every three to five years, in the near future, it may be that a single purchase is requisite for a decade or more. What’s more, it’s sensible to point out that there are some tech solutions which have persisted decades, and precisely because they were managed the right way.
