It was a real pleasure to attend the first ever Ulistic Peer Group meeting in Savannah GA this week. I am a big believer in peer groups (if I’m ever in one city for more than a week I’ll consider joining one…) and have watched many of our clients in groups like HTG and EO thrive. Ulistic threw their hat in the ring this year, offering their clients the opportunity to meet, connect, share, benchmark and learn. Managed Sales Pros and Freedom Voice were the inaugural sponsors.
I had the opportunity to sit in on several company overviews, and I appreciate the MSPS allowing me to do so. It’s always good for us to learn first-hand what companies are struggling with. I think it is safe for me to say – without violating anyone’s anonymity – that all MSPs present had similar challenges when it came to sales and marketing, and one of the biggest challenges remains to be: How can we get more leads and first sales appointments?
This isn’t a challenge unique to the dozen companies I spoke with in Savannah this week. As I’m travelling through the US for our lunch and learn series, I’m meeting HUNDREDS of MSP owners who have the same issue. They need more leads. And they don’t know what to do to get them. (You know how I think you should be getting them, ahem, but no pressure here.)
The MSPs at the UHPG were all very different companies, but they do have this in common: they are acting to resolve their sales and marketing issues. All companies present made commitments to grow their sales pipeline in very specific and measurable ways before the next meeting. Obviously, I hope Managed Sales Pros is invited in to help them, but even if we don’t get the call, I got a lot of great insight and energy from this group and I’m excited for them. I’m excited for any business owner when they break out of their comfort zone and try new things to get new results.
Everyone put their heads together to come up with interesting ways that MSPs could generate new leads. Here are the three I liked the best.
- You can organize an event and invite your prospects. Your local FBI office participates in events where they will send an agent to discuss security threats. There is no cost for this service. Host at your office to keep costs low. (Want to learn more about how to do this? Reach out to Ulistic.)
- You can create a company-wide sales incentive or contest to encourage everyone to identify new referral partners and new referral opportunities on an ongoing basis.
- You can speak with your vendors about marketing ideas and request funding to help you pay for them.
That brings me to another great comment made this week – the vendors are there to help you grow your business, but if you’re not reaching out to them, telling them about what you’re doing, what you need help with and what you have in your pipeline – especially if you’re not a “marquis” or “status” partner yet – they aren’t going to be as open to helping you. Instead of going to your vendors with your hand out, go to them asking how you can help them meet their goals. Get to know your reps, and become a squeaky wheel – in a way that shows your reps you’re working hard for them and invested in their success as well as yours. It only makes sense that vendors are focused aggressively on the partners that bring them the most deals. Strive to become that partner and when it’s time to ask for marketing funds, the odds of your project getting approved become much higher.
Speaking of vendors, the other sponsor for the Ulistic event was Freedom Voice.
I thought the Freedom Voice partner program had some great incentives – they offer compensation just for getting a demo, not just for closing a deal, and they’ll conduct demos for you and help you close the business. They have a demand generation engine to identify and then distribute new leads to partners, and there were other benefits. We know that the companies that are leading or “thin wedging” with VoIP offerings are securing more than double the meetings that their peers that are going for pure play managed services wins only are. Take a look at Freedom Voice. (Freedom Voice is not a client of Managed Sales Pros, and we aren’t in any way invested in you choosing them as a partner, but their partner program looks attractive, so check it out!) Freedom Voice WILL help you pay for telemarketing programs – so if you’re a current client, or considering becoming a client, that might work out well for you! (And us!)
It was also exciting to see the Ulistic team in action. Sarah Smith has been promoted to President, and COO. This was announced right before the event. Stuart is making some changes to the Ulistic business model, and it appears that long term these changes will result in a client base that will be aggressively focused on annual strategic marketing plans vs. one-off marketing campaigns. We wish them much success as they also set goals and made changes. Nice to see the leadership of the group following the advice they are doling out to the attendees.
And of course, I couldn’t walk away from two days of strategic planning and goal setting without thinking about how Managed Sales Pros needs to adapt and change to help our clients. The wheels are turning. We launched new services this year that we haven’t aggressively pushed to market yet, including training, consulting and some sales support solutions for MSPs. (As always, a big thanks to the MSPs that partnered with us to test them out and polish them up.) They will be available to the market soon, but something that Roy VonNorstrand from The Leren Group said this week in his presentation really stuck with me, and that was “A managed service has to be automated and repeatable, otherwise it’s not a managed service, it’s professional services, and you need to bill accordingly.” A quick reality check and I’m still thinking about it. I love all our clients. All of them. And most of our prospects, too. However, we can’t support everyone. You can’t, either. Tracie and I debate this all the time. I want to build programs that are affordable for small companies and are highly scaleable and universally appealing. Tracie wants to focus on bigger ticket programs that are going to appeal to and be accessible to only a very small percentage of the market. Who’s right? Can we both be right? Or more importantly, can we both be not wrong? I suppose time will tell, but I appreciate being able to participate in the peer group meetings this week as more than just a vendor — it’s given me an interesting framework to begin considering our future plans. So thanks to the companies that allowed me to sit through the days with them. It was very helpful!!!
Wondering where you can find the Sales Pros next Month? Look for Carrie Simpson in Dallas at the Channel Pro SMB Forum event March 2nd and 3rd. This is a free event, and it’s not too late to register if you’re interested in attending! Then you’ll find Carrie in Las Vegas for Channel Partners. Then, look for her at the CompTIA Annual Member Meeting in March.
You can find Tracie Orisko in San Diego for the Cisco Partner Summit this week, and then in LA for Exchange. Tracie is in LA promoting our new partnership with Intronis. More details on that next time – or if you simply MUST know now, reach out to your Intronis rep.
Until next time, Happy Selling!