Do Your Presentations Violate the Law?
No, not any criminal or civil law, but the law of physics. Do you recall your high school physics lessons where we learned that an object in motion tends to stay in motion unless a force is applied to it? In this case, the “object” is your prospects businesses operating conditions.
The Challenge
Selling MSP or IT consultant services is always a challenge because to some degree, most of your prospects have technology implementations that are “working”.
Obviously, one can debate the level of quality that is in play within your prospects organization, from a technology point of view but, in this regard, the IT service sales professional is at a disadvantage.
No, the man or woman that your selling to more often than not knows a lot less about technology than you do. That’s your disadvantage. You see, you’re asking a decision maker to take the risk (risk is inherit in any unplanned change).
You’re at a disadvantage because what’s valuable to you (from a technology point of view) is not valuable to your prospect. Therefore, I encourage you to focus on business operating conditions.
I believe that the MSP that sells and delivers improvements for their clients from a business operating condition point of view is and will be, the MSP who wins the day. After all, some of the arguments that I hear come across are being somewhat childish.
For instance, when was the last time that you claimed that you and or your techs were superior to the IT service providers that your prospect was using?
In fact, I’ve seen some marketing material that essentially claims you’re better than their person is regardless of the background that existing service provider has in place.
This is a playground level argument. After all, you can neither prove nor disprove that your services are equal to or superior to that of any existing IT service provider until the customer has had an opportunity to work with you for some period of time.
Are You Better?
Let’s examine the lack of logic in the “we’re better than they are” argument.
For instance, you are hiring technicians from the same labor pool that your competition draws from. Consequently, it’s logical to believe that dollar for dollar, you’ll get your hiring approximately same caliber of person as is your competition. Another component of this “we’re better than you are” claim is the communication of the number of certifications that you and or your technicians may carry.
Candidly, these claims make a lot of sense within the MSP community. But a business executive probably doesn’t understand at any level what the various certifications mean.
We certainly do not know how much work it takes to get certified. Nor, do we understand how the certifications will improve one or more of my businesses operating conditions.
Lets stop asking people to change without clearly understanding the results that they want.
The status quo, more often than not, is “A OK” from you prospects point of view. The status quo may be upside down, inside out and absolutely goofy. But, it is what it is, and your prospects are able to operate at some level without effecting any significant change.
Therefore, don’t ask the moving object to change its direction without applying a lot of force.
Don’t violate the laws of physics.
And certainly, don’t claim that you are better than anyone else until such time as you can prove it.
Prove It
The only way to prove that you’re better than your competition is to communicate the differences in your approach to affecting permanent, measurable and substantial changes in your clients’ businesses operating conditions. In order to do that, you’re going to have to do some homework.
How many dollars have you saved your existing clients?
How many hours of time have you saved them?
How much floor space have you saved them which could be converted into incremental employees and or postponement of a move to a larger office facility?
How many of their existing customers have you been able to help them keep due to the fact that your technology and or the implementation of someone else’s technology has facilitated an improvement in the white collar productivity in your clients sales organizations?
This list of questions can and should go on. But in short, what have you done for your existing customers?
Once you understand the permanent measurable and substantial changes that you’ve produced for your existing clients it will be very easy for you to sell new clients without attempting to break the laws of physics.
