If there is one piece of advice I could give to MSPs who are wondering why their sales are lagging this year it would be this:

Answer your phones. 

Have a real person answer your phone every time it rings.  It immediately differentiates you from your competitors.  An answering service costs nothing if you calculate the number of potential prospects you are losing when they hit an answering machine instead of a live person.

You’re spending a lot on your digital marketing efforts.  Not everyone wants to fill out a form and not everyone wants to communicate via email.  If you send out an effective newsletter that resulted in a phone call from a prospect, how do they perceive your service when it takes you several days to respond to their phone inquiry?  How are you perceived when nobody answers that important “ready to buy” prospect call?

Here’s what your generic voicemail says to your new prospects:

  • We’re too busy to answer our phone.    (This company is too busy to support me!)
  • We’re too small to have a receptionist. (This company is not big enough to support me!)

When you’re investing in SEO, I guarantee you when you don’t pick up your phone your prospect just moves down the Google search page to the next company.  Do you know who wins that business?  The competitor who picks up the phone first, not the person who spent the most on their ad campaign.

As a company that calls thousands of IT companies daily on behalf of ourselves and other vendors, I can tell you with great confidence that many of your phone systems are set up incorrectly, with dial by names that go to nowhere, dial by extensions that aren’t working, and sometimes even worse – an offshore answering service that your prospects are having difficulty understanding.  Your brand is everything, and all the marketing you’re spending money on is wasted when a company reaches out to engage and you’re not there to welcome them with open arms.  You won’t get that chance twice – and your forward-thinking, easy to interact with competitors will make sure you don’t.

You can automate as much as you wish, but nothing is going to replace a friendly, knowledgeable voice on the phone helping people make great decisions about next steps.

“But all I get all day are sales calls!” 

Yes.  You’re going to get sales calls.  Listen to them.  Learn from them.

How can you adopt and apply the sales techniques that successful million and billion dollar vendors are using to try to win your business?

Every sales call I take makes me a better sales executive.  Yes, I often speak to companies I have zero interest in working with.  But I’ve tried to recruit a dozen talented inside sales team members on cold calls, and I have definitely picked up some new skills, and even more importantly, I have learned what completely turned me off about doing business with someone based on their first impression.

“I’m too busy helping my current customers!”

If you don’t have time to take a call from a new prospect during your day, it’s time to evaluate how you as a business owner are spending your time.

If you don’t have time to talk to potential new customers, how will you have time to support new customers?

Figure out where your time is best spent, figure out where you are adding the most value in your own business, and then begin changing your days.  You won’t be able to do it all at once, but you can begin to prioritize activities based on what my Traction coach calls “your  genius zone”.  Simply put, your genius zone is the place where you’re doing the things you love doing the most, and the things that you’re best at.  Whatever that is, that’s where you spend the majority of your time.

How much more could you achieve relieved of the burdens of the things that you hate doing, and that frankly, you’re not that great at?  Isn’t that your exact value proposition to your managed services clients?  Your entire pitch is: “Let us take care of the IT, you build your business and work in your genius zone.”

You may not be able to move everything you hate or don’t excel at off of your plate immediately – but there is one thing that you CAN do to help your business thrive RIGHT NOW.

Answer your phone.

Make it easy for people to do business with you for the entire lifecycle of your relationship with them, from that initial sales inquiry through to your multi-year engagement solving their IT problems.  Remember that not everyone is going to fill out a form – and often they aren’t going to fill out a form using a good contact number or a business email address, because they don’t want to be spammed to death after they reach out for information.

We understand how busy you are. 

We know you prioritize current clients over potential prospects.  And you should, but why should you have to choose? Here’s a service that we launched specifically to solve that problem, and it helps busy IT business owners like you:  a managed services specific answering service staffed by managed services sales experts.

Let someone else answer your sales line.  A real person, within 60 seconds, every time. And not an offshore message-taker, but  US-based, talented inside sales  rep who can confidently present the managed services value proposition, qualify the opportunity for you, and schedule a sales appointment with anyone who is genuinely qualified and interested.   Vendor call?   No problem, we’ll take the message and forward it to you.  Support request?  We’ll diffuse the customer’s anxiety, and send your team the message immediately, or hot transfer the call right to your support line!

Our call answer service often pays for itself in one inbound phone call!  Call us at 844-466-2624 for more information, email us at hello@managedsalespros.com or fill out this contact form:  https://www.managedsalespros.com/contact_us/ 

Not convinced?  Our team can get started tomorrow, and we’re so confident you’ll love the service that we’ll offer you the first month at no charge!

Let our clients tell you why they love this service:

“The Managed Sales Pros Call Answer service produced ROI for us after one inbound call!  We were previously using a non-MSP specific virtual receptionist.  Having a live, experienced sales executive who understands our service offerings has already made a huge difference for our business and we are already closing deals as a direct result of this service.” 

— Andrew Sharicz, President & CEO, Agnostic Technologies