Rookie "Must Knows" In Selling Managed Services

If you are a new sales professional or a seasoned sales professional, but new to IT or Managed Service Sales, this course is for you. Learn about your industry and the challenges that come with it as well as what you need to know to become successful in your new role without needing an IT Degree!

Video Transcript

" So we're here to sell managed services. Now, it's very important that you understand the types of prospects, you're probably going to run into was just happens to be the old way of doing business. It's very important you understand this, especially if you're just getting into this industry of selling managed services. Okay, so you've heard me talk about the evolution of the IT industry. Now, let's talk about how people when I say people, how it companies are doing business now that are not in managed services. Now, you got to remember, if you work for a company that is 100%, geared towards assigning new agreements and bringing on new clients, man, that's fantastic, because you're with a company that gets it. Okay? Some of the companies you're going to be competing against, do nothing but react. Okay, there's, you guys have probably already heard this. And so proactive versus reactive, a reactive company means they wait for their clients to call. And then they react and go handle the problem while billing this hourly rate, while they're there fixing the problem. Now, what happens here is you're really unaligned because if you think about it, they're in dire needs, they're having problems. And you're benefiting financially because of it. Okay, the longer it takes for you to fix their problem, the more hours you get to build them at either 150 or 175 or $250 an hour, depending on your neck of the woods. Okay, so what happens is, a lot of clients know that they're going to give when they're on this type of plan, they know they're going to get billed. So they don't tend to call in every problem that they have. Sometimes they're instructed to try to fix it themselves. Sometimes they have to wait till they get a bunch of problems, and then call in that company. And they fix them all at once that day, which tends to save them hundreds and hundreds of dollars, because they're not being paid charged for the trip charges. So being billed labor, every time you go out is a is the old way of doing it's a very reactive way of doing it and you're not aligned with your clients. Now, the next thing that they do is they do these block our agreements. Okay, this, you'll probably run across this still quite a bit. For example, a company comes up like, Hey, we're tired of paying $200 an hour, we tend to come out and fix our problem. The guy goes, No big deal. Here's what we can do. If you want to prepay 100 hours, you can get it for $175 an hour, if you want to prepay for 200 hours, you can get it for $150 an hour. Okay, so what happens is the company goes back and they look and see how many hours they use last year and like oh, well, this makes total sense. Let's buy 150 hours, let's buy 200 hours, let's buy whatever. But again, the goal of the IT company is now to hurry up and use all those hours as much as they can. So they can sell you another block time of hours. So you can see where we still are very unaligned with the client and what we're going to be and what we're trying to build here. As far as a tight relationship, we benefit when they're in trouble. Now some companies also make the hours expire at the end of the year. So they buy 200 hours. And if they don't use them by the end of 2019. They all go away. Okay, so these are some things you need to look for. Another challenge you're going to see, okay, that's real prevalent in our industry is nickel and diming. So what happens is they lure the client in with a low contracted rate of $300 a month, let's just say now keep in mind, you probably quoted 2000 a month, they come in at $300 a month. So they're manipulating the client to basically say, Hey, we're on retainer for you. We'll do all these things for you pay $300 a month. But then what they do is every time there's one little thing out of scope of what's outlined in there $300 a month, they build that hourly rate and at the end of the day, the client still cannot manage your budget. What is it expenditure is Okay, so that's a big thing as well, projects. Let's talk about projects. Most of the opportunities you're going to gain to have the I option to sell a managed service agreement will come by the client calling for some sort of project. And what I mean by that is, they may reach out to you saying, Hey, we need to get a price on a server, or Hey, our servers running slow or our server is broken, or we need a firewall, or we need to get 10 more workstations. Now, what most it sales people do, is they look at that opportunity. And they concentrate on just selling what the client says they want. Okay, they come in, and they just give them a quote on the server. And then the managed services piece, or the service contract portion of it is more of an afterthought, kind of like, oh, by the way, do you want to? Do you want fries with that, rather, and it comes in way, hey, we can also do a warranty for you on this project. That's big too, because it it sells guy does not want to risk losing the project. If he tries to work on the managed services piece, so they're perfectly fine by just getting the project self making a little making they're 10% off of whatever the project is, or 15%. And then they move on. These are some things that if you look at our sales process, okay, that I've taught you how to capitalize on an opportunity, and then flip it and do the managed service portion first, and then here's the project that goes along with it. Guys, if you haven't watched that video on those on the sales process, watch that, okay, because it's big. With everything being reactive versus proactive in this old way of doing business, like I had mentioned before, you can't align yourself with the client. It's kind of like how doctors bill it doesn't matter, every time you go in there to see him. They're giving you a bill, even if they said they made you better. And you go back with the same problem The next day, they're still billing you or your insurance company that 1000s of dollars that it is what managed services does if if develop the correct way. It allows you and the client to get aligned. Because now what happens if you Billy flat fee for everything, you make money when the client does not need to call you, rather than the client calling you when they're down. Okay, you and you are being paid to fix their problem. Now you are being paid for them not to have problems, that's a big difference. Okay, they are paying you to stay up, not paying you when they're down. Now, when this if you can, if you start thinking about in those terms, then you have to start thinking about what else you can do for that client in the beginning to prevent these problems from happening. And then what happens is when they're down, guess what, they're losing money, and you're losing money. So that perception of the client says this company does not want me to be down because it sucks for both of us. Were before. If there's any veterans watching this, there was always that question, did you really send the virus? Can you really get you've been here for 10 hours? You can't fix it, there's always that question of he's not getting rich, and I'm losing my ass what's happening here. Okay, This eliminates that. And that's where managed services is really, really taken a hold. Okay, so understand. When you're out looking for clients, you're gonna see a lot of this break fixed type of stuff. And that's what we call it, we call it the break, fix the break fix methodology versus managed services. And anybody that's on break fix is on a very reactive plan, okay. And it allows you the opportunity to ask the right question, and then present a solution that's going to align both companies and start to build a relationship where you can then become an advisor after so long and not just an IT guy. So look at that, understand it and keep that in the back of your head, when you're talking to clients and how they're already set up. "