September has always been a time of new beginnings for me – refocusing seems easier, and starting new projects is invigorating.  I very much reset on a “back to school” calendar instead of a “new year” calendar.  So my resolutions and changes usually begin after Labour Day, not New Years Day!   With that in mind, it’s great to be back at work full time after a summer of working half days.

“Carrie, what have you been up to all summer?”

Well, I spent most of my summer travelling up and down the California coast with my daughters.  We took a surf lesson in Venice Beach, and immediately became obsessed with our new hobby.  I had meetings with clients and prospects all along the west coast this summer, but the minute I finished my work commitments, we were all off to the beach.

santa-barbara

It was a fantastic summer.  I worked 5-10AM most days, and then spent the good part of the day with my kiddos and more often than not, a surf instructor.  We surfed beaches from Venice to Santa Cruz and back.  I ended up with a 9′ board that now resides in my living room in Las Vegas, and both kids became very proficient surfers.  Even the littlest one can get up reliably!  Anyhow, I’m not here to tell you about what I accomplished on the water.  (Not much, actually – I’m enthusiastic, but not that skilled yet!) The really exciting update is this: I spent all summer preparing for a new project with our sister company Everywhere Managed.

So, what’ s up here at Sales Pros?

After a summer of testing and talking to prospects in different markets, I’m excited to announce our new Pay Per Lead pricing model!

Some background on why we’re offering this to the market:

Many of the MSPs that need new business the most are the ones who are least in a position to access our prospecting services.  The whole time we’ve been growing Managed Sales Pros I’ve been focused on finding a business model that would be attractive and accessible to ALL MSPs who needed help with business development.   The kicker, of course, is that it had to be affordable for them and profitable for me.

We tried many things – smaller programs with less calling, for example.  Didn’t work at all – you need a high volume of calling to penetrate a market effectively. 20 hours a week is the minimum magic number, and that’s our core offering.  At $6000 a month per market, which is what our “managed” sales prospecting services cost, we’re priced out of reach for some of the market.  And with no guarantee of performance or appointment volume, that annual price-tag can be a hard pill to swallow.  Now, we know our pricing is fair, and we know that our process works – clients that measured all net new opportunity presented to them through our programs over the course of 2 years have seen over 500% ROIs.  There is also a huge amount of value in having someone deliver your sales pitch on the phone to prospects 100+ times daily.   Calculate what it costs to find, hire, train and manage your in-house caller, and to develop prospecting programs that work , and you’ll quickly see that our rates aren’t that high – as a matter of fact, we’re intentionally smack dab in the middle of the sales outsourcing industry rate card.  But if you don’t have the budget, you don’t have the budget.  I love being the company that people aspire to work with when they have the budget for it.  I really love the idea of being a profitable company that can help companies at ALL stages of their growth.    That’s what I’m going for with this new service.  If all you want/require are one or two well qualified opportunties a month, and you don’t mind sacrificing the other pieces of the puzzle (data, branding, pipeline visibility) then this will be a service that will be accessible to you, and attractive to you.

One MSP flat out called me out online and said “If you’re so great, why don’t you put your money where your mouth is and offer pay for performance?”

Done.

Now come buy it like you promised you would.  (You know who you are.)

However, before you buy it, I want you to understand how this new service will work, what it can and can’t do, and what the differences in the programs are.

Here’s an overview of the how new model works:

  • My team at Everywhere Managed calls in to markets that aren’t currently under engagement with Managed Sales Pros. If you’re located in a market where Managed Sales Pros already supports an MSP, I can’t help you.  
  • If you’re located in a city where we aren’t engaged, and you want to be offered pay as you go opportunities, you’ll provide a retainer of $5000.00.  Good leads cost $500, and Fantastic leads cost $1000.00.   The first company in any city to provide a retainer gets first right of refusal on leads.  They retain the first right of refusal until they decline to purchase a lead that fits their identified parameters.  (So if I come to you with a 3o seat law firm, and you identified that size and vertical as being your target, and you say no to the lead, you go to the bottom of the list, and the next company in line gets offered the lead.  Then they retain first right of refusal until they say no, and so on and so forth…)
  • There is no timeline for delivery on these leads.  When we find them, we’ll offer them up.
  • There is no guarantee on number of leads you’ll receive.  I can’t guarantee how many leads we’ll find every month in any market for our managed clients or our pay for performance clients.   That variable is out of my control.  Our leads are qualified, and we aren’t going to bill you $1000 for garbage you shouldn’t have driven across town for.
  • Once you have accepted a lead, the amount is deducted from your retainer, and it is non-refundable.  You buy it, it’s yours.  No take backs.
  • Your commitment is one year or until your retainer runs out.
  • There is a set-up fee.  It’s $1000.00 and it’s non-refundable.  Even if you turn down every lead we send you,  there is still work involved in on-boarding you.
  • You SHOULD NOT and CAN NOT depend on this pay as you go program to be your sole or primary business development initiative.  It’s not going to provide you with a consistent flow of opportunity.
  • When we identify a lead in your retained market, and it fits your parameters, we’ll offer it to you with all the information we’ve gathered, so you can make an informed decision as to whether or not you’d like to buy it.  We obviously will not tell you the name of the company/contact prior to purchasing.  If you buy it, we introduce you to the company looking for the appointment and transfer the lead to you exclusively.   If you don’t buy it, you’ll move down on the list for the first ask, and we’ll offer it to the next company on our roster.
  • Leads are sold once only.  Once they are purchased, you own it exclusively.
  • All calls will originate from Everywhere Managed.  All marketing collateral and email correspondence will come from Everywhere Managed, until the point of hand-off.  This is different from our current engagements where we promote your MSP on each call as if we were a part of your sales team.   When we call for an MSP for a managed sales prospecting program, we promote you, your company and your brand.
  • We have tested the lead hand-off process, and it’s working well.  We make the introduction to the appropriate contact, prep you for the appointment, and transfer all the information we have available to us about the lead over to you.
  • If at any time an MSP requests to buy our managed prospecting services in a market that we are calling in to for Everywhere Managed,  we retain the right to give all pay for performance clients in that market 30 days notice, and at the end of that time any remaining retainer will be refunded.  Our core business remains managed sales prospecting for MSPs.

The biggest concerns our testers had for our program was this:

What happens if you try to sell me a lead and the lead is already a client of ours?  

We won’t always know who the prospective company is using for their services.   Sometimes we will.  I want to be very clear here, and you should know this coming in:  In a pay for performance market, If we find someone looking for a new MSP, regardless of who their current provider is, that lead is for sale.  If it’s your turn to buy, you’ll get the chance to buy it before we sell it, but if someone else it at bat, they’ll get that lead.  We can’t make money protecting your client lists.  You want risk free, and I want profitable.  That being said, we’re also not gunning for your client rosters – we’re calling cold data we have purchased from online sources.  There’s no malice here, just an eye towards an offering that will help most companies most of the time.  Once in a while, you’ll get the short straw. The best solution?  Service your clients so well they don’t take sales calls.

We have proactively begun prospecting in several markets as we train more callers, work on our process, build our database and look for new leads.    As this offering matures, our vision includes automation of the lead delivery and purchasing process.  As always, I remain grateful to the companies that have trusted us to help them grow their business.  It makes me proud to share that many of our very first managed sales prospecting clients came back to test this program with us, and still more provided us with feedback on process, pricing and what they would or wouldn’t try or buy, and why.

If you own an MSP, and you’d like to be presented with great sales opportunities from time to time, with no risk to you and no monthly price tag, please contact us at hello@managedsalespros.com to learn more, or fill out the form on our site here:  Contact Us!