IT is getting harder for most companies, not easier. So why are managed services so hard to sell?
Given the multi-faceted requirements of IT today, there is no way SMBs can manage a healthy infrastructure on their own. Outsourcing is inevitable, and as responsibilities for different aspects of security and maintenance get divvied up among a diverse cast of characters – none of whom report to each other – the harder it is to keep things from falling through the cracks. Managed services solves this problem by putting a team of specialists in charge of all tasks the internal team cannot or should not administer on their own. It simplifies the infrastructure, establishes accountability, reduces costs.Businesses have all the reasons in the world to purchase your services, and yet, MSPs continue to struggle with finding new customers.
I’m not going to rehash marketing best practices we’ve all heard a thousand times. I’m sure you know the importance of having a “unique selling proposition” and a “target customer” for your marketing efforts. Today, I want to discuss a far more urgent challenge we are faced with as marketers. The reason why so many campaigns fail is that we aren’t listening to our customers.
How Well Do You Really Know Your Customers?
Marketers are in a tough spot these days. No matter how hard they work, they are set up to fail or deliver diminished results, almost every time. The reason? They are tasked with changing the behaviors of people with they know little or nothing about.
If your company has a marketing director, ask him or her to explain who your “target buyer” is and how they use that information. More than likely, you will hear something like this:
Our buyer persona is a C-suite executive or business owner who presides over (number of employees). He or she is concerned with keeping costs down and profits high, leading a team of middle managers who carry out the company mission. Our marketing messages focus on how a managed IT solution can reduce costs and increase efficiency across the organization.
The problem with this answer is that you can replace the words “managed IT” with almost any solution on the market today. Regardless of how polished your marketing campaign is – you are singing to deaf ears, because you sound like everyone else.
Marketers Need Real Buyer Insights.
Most marketers lack real insights about what customers care about and what factors influence their decision to hire an IT partner. Imagine what your marketing team could do if they knew the stories behind the decision-making process to hire a company like yours. With these insights in hand, they could craft a program that speaks directly to the concerns, challenges, and aspirations of your clients.
Instead, marketers are left to structure campaigns around generic industry reports (a bad idea) or assumptions about what customers care about (a worse idea). You cannot effectively sell people a service without listening to them talk.
Here are a few different ways marketers can gather business intelligence about customers:
Remove Barriers Between Sales And Marketing.
This is an oft repeated phrase among content marketers, and it makes perfect sense. Sales people have daily interactions with customers. Marketers have none. When management allows marketing people to shadow their sales colleagues and find out what customers ask about, they can identify real gaps in communication between the company and customer.
Regardless of whether or not the general sales manager is comfortable with allowing marketing staff to go out on sales calls, it’s important they get the information they need to do a better job, and that means breaking down silos between these two key departments. This collaboration should not be limited to sales either. Any department that talks to customers on a regular basis will have valuable insight to share, including customer service and accounting.
Follow IT Forums Online.
IT forums are a great place to learn about challenges your customers have. These boards are a goldmine of blog topics your company can write about, covering everything from Windows crashes to hardware repairs to security issues.
Buyer Persona Interviews
IT forums are a great place to learn about challenges your customers have. These boards are a goldmine of blog topics your company can write about, covering everything from Windows crashes to hardware repairs to security issues.
All of the above methods of gathering information will help marketing improve the company messaging, but it falls short of giving them an understanding of how people make a decision to buy an IT plan like your company provides. Your salespeople may have some perspective on this process, but there’s a whole lot going on behind the scenes that customers do not share.
Adele Revella from Buyer Persona Institute talks about the importance of doing one-on-one interviews with buyers who have recently purchased a solution like yours. These interviews should be conducted by an outside agency or someone in-house who has never interacted with the customer in a sales role, and deliver the following insights:
- What change in the company sparked the decision to look for an IT solution provider?
- What criteria did they use to narrow the list of candidates?
- What benefits did they hoped to gain? These are often not the ones you assumed they wanted.
- What disqualifying factors did they use to eliminate other contenders?
- What was it about the provider they chose that made them the best fit?
It’s easy to make assumptions when it comes to marketing. Everyone – from the CEO down to the admin assistants – thinks they know what customers want to know. These wrong assumptions are the reason why so many marketing campaigns deliver lackluster results.
When you have real insights from qualified buyers, your team can create amazing content that answers their questions and leads them to sign on the dotted line. This is the moment when clear communication becomes more than a good idea. It puts money in your pocket.
