Help Desk Buttons Partners With Managed Sales Pros to Build and Train Outbound Prospecting Team

Help Desk Buttons was interested in builing a north american reseller partner network, but they needed a little help getting started.  Read more about how Managed Sales Pros was able to assist!

About Help Desk Buttons

Alex Permenter, the owner of a successful managed services provider in Georgia, developed an in-house help desk support solution that solves one of the most challenging problems that an I.T. help desk encounters.

Tier2Technologies created hardware to log tickets instantly using a physical “button”, and software to manage those tickets.

The Problem

Most managed services clients don’t understand I.T. terms, and they don’t or won’t accurately describe the challenges they may have encountered in the actions they took prior to ticket submission.

Laziness, deception and malice aside, end users really just don’t know what information is important to an MSP’s help desk.  The Tier2Technologies Help Desk Button eliminates the need for an end user to describe the issues they experienced, and submits a ticket to your help desk with one click.

Like most MSP founders, Alex built his first business via networking, community involvement, and referrals.  While the team knew the value of the product they had created for the MSP community, and had achieved success using it internally, they weren’t having success reaching other MSPs to have them test, evaluate or adopt the solution.

Tier2Technologies approached Managed Sales Pros with their Minimum Viable Product – Help Desk Buttons, and while Carrie was intrigued by the product, she felt that an outsourced outbound calling program would provide little Return On Investment at that stage in their development.

The Solution

When Help Desk Buttons was ready for beta testing, Carrie agreed to take a calling project, but requested a commitment to a consulting engagement prior to the program launch.  Her terms were very reasonable:  Help Desk Buttons would pay for their consulting project after the outbound calling program was completed, and only upon mutual agreement that it had been of value.

The Help Desk Buttons consulting project with Managed Sales Pros included:

• recruiting beta test partners
• aggregating feedback
• making initial introductions to industry influencers and potential champions,
• suggestions on partner recruitment targets and strategy
• the acquisition of the first paid Help Desk Buttons reseller partner.

Elizabeth Copeland, Director of UX and Operations at Tier2Technologies, describes their experience with Carrie’s consulting process:

“Working with Carrie was the missing piece we needed to establish our place in the MSP Channel. Her commitment and competence, not to mention extensive knowledge and network, were invaluable as we developed and honed our processes, hired and trained employees, and tested as solidified our brand and marketing from our MVP to feature-release within a year. She provided insight into some of the best practices to-date in the industry and templates for modeling our business on those as well. You couldn’t ask for a better jump-start. The best part is, Carrie’s skill, energy, and insight made it painless.”

After the consulting project ended, the calling project with Managed Sales Pros was not launched, the decision was made to build an in-house sales development team.  Help Desk Buttons repurposed their outbound calling retainer in order to provide on-site call team training for an in-house team.  During this process, the Covid-19 pandemic made travel to the Help Desk Buttons office untenable, and ongoing training was provided to sales team online.

Deliverables:

• Managed Sales Pros trusted partners were the first to evaluate and adopt the Help Desk Buttons ticketing solution.
• Feedback from partners was aggregated and used to create sale pitches and marketing materials for the I.T. channel.
• Help Desk Buttons used trusted partner feedback to modify their product name and sales positioning to better describe the solution and engage the channel.”Help Desk Buttons, powered by Tier2Tickets” split up the hardware and software solutions to better reflect the usability and flexibility of the software to suit prospective clients.
• Trusted partners provided valuable feedback to enhance sales language on website.
• Tier2Technologies used an online recruitment strategy building on success of initial beta testers, secured hundreds of users after posting in an online forum.
• In-house team was identified and hired.
• Sales team training and program development was completed on-site in Feb 2020.
• Continuing education training was completed online in April 2020.

Outcome:

While Tier2Technologies originally planned to outsource their sales development program, it was determined that the Return On Investment (based on cost per acquisition estimates and lifetime value projection) of outsourced sales development in early beta use was not high enough to warrant the engagement.  A software company can choose to grow profitably, or choose to grow quickly, but very rarely can they do both.  As a privately owned and funded company, it was essential that T2T manage their cash flow.   With no historical data to predict length of sales cycle, determining the break even for outsourced sales development was impossible.

The suggestion to hire agents in house (3 FTE x42,000 per year vs. 3 FTE x 36,000 per month) was approved, and T2T began building their own call team.

Once in place, Managed Sales Pros founder Carrie Simpson spent a full week on site with the team, auditing calls, updating scripts, giving feedback to the call team and leadership, and providing soft skills, I.T. channel education and product knowledge training to the new outbound agents.

Happy Clients

Brandon Bish, Account Manager, was one of the in-house team members that worked with Carrie to improve his outbound skills.  With several years of sales experience in the I.T. industry, he already knew the market — but his previous roles didn’t rely as heavily on cold calling.  He shares his experience as a recipient of Managed Sales Pros call process training:

“Having Carrie sit with me when I first started was a huge benefit. She was able to help me with the smaller aspects of over the phone communication. I have no problem talking to anyone, but doing so over the phone can be very different. She was able to give me pointers on how to keep the conversation open ended and gave me a better idea of who I was talking to on the other end.”

While Tier2Technologies declined to share numbers for this testimonial, Alex Permenter, CEO of Tier2Technologies, was happy to share this thoughts on their partnership with Managed Sales Pros:

“I could not be happier with Carries performance. She seamlessly integrated into our team, assessed the situation and started acting proactively in our interest almost immediately.  She knew what needed to be done at the stage we were at better than we did and started executing successfully on day one.  Before we even knew what was happening phone calls and emails and connections were being made that have lasted to this day.  It was like instantly having another partner at the helm, and her input and the feedback she was able to gather rapidly absolutely guided our path early on.  I can say that without a doubt we would not have the success we have had without her guidance.  I felt like if she had left after the first day of our consulting engagement that we would have gotten our monies worth.  In the time since, and without payment,  both Carrie and her partner Tracie have continued to advocate for us, make connections and send ideas our way.  In 20 years of business, hiring Carrie  was one of the best decisions we have ever made and one we would and will make again.”

About Tier2Technologies

Founded in 2018, Tier2Technologies is a team of technical fixers who create software and hardware that improve the quality of life for modern, customer-oriented IT Support Professionals.

Our ownership team has combined backgrounds in information technology, computer sciences, engineering, mathematics, user experience, community building, and design.

We like to look at problems and create the solutions that make you the hero.

No more starting your tech at the baseline. Let us give you a head start. Skip Tier1, we’re Tier2Technologies!

Contact Tier2Technologies

El Copeland

Chief Operating Officer

Tier2Technologies

(833) 328-8866

support@helpdeskbuttons.com

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