Our most recent client is an MSP in Flagstaff, AZ.  They were delighted with the first few weeks of their campaign, and we asked them if they would mind providing us with a testimonial that identified how quickly we were able to get their campaign up and running.  What they sent over was above and beyond the call of duty, and it’s the least cookie-cutter testimonial I have ever read, and I’m publishing it unedited because I couldn’t bear to “corporate” it up any.  I hope you enjoy reading it as much as our team did.  Kudos to Tracie for launching this campaign, and to Ashley, their Market Catalyst, for getting the meetings.  Thanks to James for sending over such a great note. It made our day!!!  Learn more about Unity Technology Services here: www.unitytech.com

So,

Managed Sales Pros. You’re thinking about going with them, or you wouldn’t be reading this. Tracie asked me, as VP of Sales for my company, to write a testimonial about our first couple weeks with them. Prepare for the raw, uncut version.

We are a multi-million dollar company. I am VP of Sales. We manage about 15 clients, most of them widely dispersed geographically. True managed services is a new thing for us, really in the past year. We have ~ 25 clients who are break-fix, or for whom we do large projects. Moving toward managed services, as a baseline for profitability such that projects are just icing, is our goal. We had almost given up. Then, we met Managed Sales Pros.

Last year we hired a guy to cold call clients, with a lot of somewhat technical phone sales experience (not my idea). He got 3 (pretty lousy) appointments in 4 months. I probably spent 80 man hours training him for our field. From our warm list, a list of clients we work with who had issued RFP’s requesting services or hardware with a deadline of 30 days (ie, fish in a barrel), he did OK. (Except being out of state he never got a handle on our extensive geography. He would set appointments 2 hours apart that were 6 hours away. grr) That said, I did better from that list, calling 1-2 clients a day. I managed to add 12 new clients in 3 months, no thanks to him.

That was in February. We hired Managed Sales Pros (MSP) to start July 01. They tell me this is not the best time to start a sales campaign, business cycles being what they are. Here we are, 2 weeks in, and SIX APPOINTMENTS! Mother of gods! Do you know what that means?!? I’ve been to two of them so far, & let me tell you, these are very good, very well qualified leads. I am absolutely breathless. We did not think anything like this was possible.

We signed up with MSP because we have absolutely no name recognition locally. We needed to break into the local business market, to reduce our overhead for servicing such widely distributed clients. I was pretty doubtful of the usefulness of cold calling, but decided to give it a shot. I let Tracie have a go: at me, then at my decision makers. I was convinced; my bosses were convinced – not based on gut instinct or hope, but on facts.

Managed Services, & IT in general, is a tough business. Low profit margins, very competitive, very specialized… you know all this. What makes MSP important, what makes them a game changer, is THEY UNDERSTAND OUR BUSINESS. They understand our markets, our clients, & most important, they understand how to SELL to them. Honestly, these leads are like putty in your hands, it is for you to screw up!

You may hire a guy who does cold calling. You may have some (gods forbid) tech calling people. Maybe you are really crazy and trying someone with no experience. All these will end in disaster. Get someone with experience in THIS EXACT FIELD. It is as specialized as anything else we do; not everyone can do it. Think about it. Would you hire someone who only had desktop experience and expect them to manage a Cisco network with VOIP & QoS? Neither should you hire someone to bring in leads who has some other generalized experience.

Moreover, you may be against cold calling. I was, and probably still am in most instances. Maybe you operate solely by word of mouth, maybe you advertise (please tell me how great that is). Word of mouth only goes so far. Statistically speaking, everyone has a circle of roughly 300 people they know, to the most cursory extent. Word of mouth is great, but it has its limits. What if you want to break into a market where you don’t know anyone? How are you going to do that? You’ve got to make at least your initial contacts cold, & in my experience, nobody does that better than these guys.

So /rant. I’ve said enough, except this. If you don’t go with MSP, or you just don’t really feel like expanding your business, that’s OK too. As long as you call me (928) 380-2080, let me know where you are & what market you’re in, so we can break in using MSP. We might hire you later on a 1099. Gods know we’ll have the business!

James Wisch
VP Sales
Unity Technology Services
Flagstaff, AZ