Follow these four essential practices:
- Define objectives and roles
From cold calling to upselling, define each sales role and what it means to be successful in it. - Find the right personality
Look for a “hunter” type who can close deals but who also understands and fits in with your culture. This rare unicorn will be the face of your company and a main source of its growth, so it’s very important to hire the right person. - Keep your sales team motivated
Make sure your compensation model rewards success and keeps your salespeople hungry for more. - Evaluate regularly
Assess both performance and expectations often to ensure they align with your current position and goals.
Cultivate your brand
With a motivated team in place able to speak knowledgably about your services, it’s time to get them in front of prospects. Whether it’s setting up Zoom meetings while we’re social distancing, or attending meetings and speaking events, your salespeople should embrace every opportunity to show prospects you’re an expert and a trusted partner invested in your customers’ success.
Generate leads
To generate more leads for your salespeople, make a concerted effort to up your marketing game. Many successful MSPs utilize all or some of the following:
- Referral programs
Give your current customers an incentive to refer you to their business contacts. - Video and content sharing
Especially now—with so many people working from home, not traveling or attending meetings, and on devices more often—finding ways to share the exciting, humorous, important, and triumphant things you do gives your prospects a better understanding of your value. - Targeted PPC, Facebook, and LinkedIn Ads
Again, now is the time to get those compelling messages out there with professionally executed online ads. - Invest in marketing automation tools
We’re big fans of automation, so any trusted tool that can eliminate repetitive or manual marketing tasks will surely end up paying off. - Use your marketing development funds (MDFs)
Put channel partner money to good use by supporting your marketing initiatives.
No matter which avenues you choose, take the time to form a methodical and intentional plan of action before jumping in.
Make the sale
When you have a prospect in front of you, use that opportunity to demonstrate all you can do to go above and beyond break/fix issues to strengthen their business. Make the sale by:
- Using professional communication materials that detail your key contacts and how to reach them for various questions and concerns
- Picking the brains of stakeholders to get a holistic view of their company, the issues they face and the opportunities available
- Optimizing the sales assessment and discovery process as much as possible. If you have the power to automate documentation, use that during the sales process to show the powerful data aggregation and change detection abilities you have in your toolbox
Yes, making sales can seem like a daunting prospect, but following this process can help make selling and marketing your services as painless—and effective—as possible.
Adam Slutskin, Chief Revenue Officer, Liongard
Liongard is a member of the SolarWinds MSP Technology Alliance Program (TAP). TAP is a growing group of trusted vendors we’ve teamed up with to offer a variety of third-party integrations and services to help MSPs better serve their customers. This blog is part of the TAP Blog Series through which we will provide you with relevant and interesting guest blog contributions from our TAP members.