Ask A Mentor: India-Based MSP Seeks Guidance
Each Tuesday, MSPmentor’s Ask a Mentor service publishes a reader question and invites you to weigh in with recommendations. This week’s question comes from an MSP based in Bangalore, India. Here’s the question and our reply…
Question: The CEO states: “Currently we have one client (MSP in California) for whom we provide end-to-end IT managed services. We are looking at expanding and would really appreciate your help to strategize our growth and suggest the competitive advantage we can put forward to our prospects. Also, what are your thoughts in terms of value addition we can add in our services. Suggestions, advice will be appreciated, Thanks in advance.”
Answer: It’s difficult for MSPmentor to offer guidance without understanding the services you offer, your target markets and your core expertise. Still, we have some suggestions. First, conduct extensive interviews with your client in California. Capture their feedback for case studies (PDF, YouTube Video, etc.). Then, build upon the services that the California customer most greatly values. Also, ask that customer about their top business and technology priorities for 2011, then potentially develop services to address those needs. Make sure you publish the customer case study, and leverage it during meetings with additional target customers. Sorry our advice is a bit generic but it’s impossible to offer deeper perspectives without truly understanding your specific business model.
Readers: Feel free to weigh in with comments or suggestions. Or, to submit your own question, simply visit our Ask a Mentor page. We’ll post a new reader inquiry each Tuesday. And we’ll reply privately to you as well.
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I find, as cliche as it may be, there is no more effective manner to selling solutions than identifying business needs/pain points and providing a solution that solves said pain points.
This is true in, consumer or commercial, humans simply buy what they need, or to solve issues that plague them.
The difficulty comes in that many times End User’s (EU’s) dont know what their true pain points are…(besides the obvious ones like “My email is down”). EU’s often ignore things like Operations Management, proper Change Management, the value of standardization, Assett Inventory, Vulnerability Assessments, testing Data Restore and Failover processes (to name but a few) simply because they can be complicated, they are difficult to tangibilize, and therefore they simply just keep moving forward without addressing.
The above are extremely important in Operating effectively. A True MSP wont sell an RMM solution, but instead sells the value of being able to aid in some of those categories above. If you are telling your customer they need Online Storage, you are wrong. Instead they need resiliency, they need reliability, they need confidence. They may not realize this until they fully understand just how unreliable tape drives, USB drives are for backup and restore….
Target Marketing and effective branding can aid in getting the message across.
I cannot tell if you are currently doing this today from your question, but in my conversations – the ones who cannot pentrate additional accounts are simply positioning incorrectly, and missing the bigger picture of what Managed Services do for an EU.
Erik Walczak
Cloud Computing Technical Specialist
Ingram Micro
Erik: Thanks for weighing in. I’m not sure if the company that submitted the question has feet on the street in North America. So, I wondering if finding those pain points will be more difficult given the geographic challenges… Still, I can’t debate you on the pain point advice.
-jp