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A lot.

I’ve always liked Will Smith, but now I love him.

Managed service providers are made up of people.  Every person can learn something or at least be inspired by this video:

Mike

Well it has been three months since I first posted about losing a client do Dell managed services and I wanted to provide an update.

I wish I could tell you that the client has already returned to our service while sharing tales of Dells service follies. This unfortunately has not happened, yet, but I do believe there is a good lesson to share in this story and it is: LONG TERM CONTRACTS

Long term contracts may not seem that revolutionary but i would suggest if you have not moved to a two or three year contract on your services you are missing a big opportunity.

If you look around you will notice that most contracts being presented to prospects these days require a commitment of greater than a year allowing you to lock in the relationship and better predict attrition rates.

One of the easiest ways to do this is to provide hardware with your services. Prospects are use to the idea of a 36 month lease on equipment so when you tell them you will provide all your services and include X hardware if they sign a 3 year deal they don’t think twice about signing up. If you are not providing hardware with your services you need to look at both the Zenith BDR solution as well as the guys over at Chartec that allow you to do so with very little investment on your part.

So how does this all relate to the client Dell managed to coax away from our services? Well, the reality is that they are still our client and will be for the next 17 months. We had signed a 36 month agreement with them on part of our service and they they still look to us to provide this service today.

This is great from a few perspectives:

1. they are still our client and we held on to over $12,000 in revenue
2. the margin on providing a piece of service is often greater than being a complete IT team for a client – which it is in this case
3. when the client is looking for something the new provider, Dell, does not provide or for a second opinion on something that has been recommended they still call me for advice – i spoke with the CEO not more than a week ago and guarantee i will be top of mind if and when they decide to change providers again!

So the silver lining to the Dell managed services story is that we did not actually lose the client, we only lost a piece of the revenue, and I look forward to the post telling you the client has come back to us.

Dust off your contracts and find a compelling way to make them 36 months!

Josh

One of my favorite business and marketing gurus is Dan Kennedy.  He suggests that every business – including MSPs – is at risk of having a “Sales Prevention Department” working within the company, doing everything it can to prevent you from actually doing business with more customers.

Does your managed services business have a Sales Prevention Department?  I think we all do in one degree or another, and it would be smart for every MSP to take a look at their sales and service processes to find where you are slipping up.

I have a few examples from other industries recently that might illustrate some opportunities to improve at your business:

1. Call centers that don’t pick up the phone! Everon is in the process of selecting a new call center to help us with a new service we are rolling out, and I have contacted about 15 to get quotes.  At least half don’t even pick up their own phone!  Of the half that do, at least half again didn’t call me back when I asked them to.  Are you kidding me?!  The Sales Prevention Department strikes again!
2. Salespeople that call you “Big guy” in the first 30 seconds of speaking with them. I’m not kidding.  I called a company recently with every intention of buying from them, but was absolutely rejected by the completely clueless salesperson I had to deal with.  He called me “Big guy” in the first 30 seconds of our conversation.  I was so turned off by this and other things that I bought from someone else.
3. Gatekeepers that take too much pride in their work. Again, I was contacting a fellow small business with 100% intention on buying from them, and called the owner to introduce myself.  He is a grad of the Babson MBA program, as am I, and I wanted to make a personal connection.  The gatekeeper took so much pride in her work that she refused to connect me to him.  I guarantee you the owner would fire her if he knew she was pursuing her role with such fervor.
4. Employees that rob from the company till. I’m not referring to outright theft here, but the kind of robbery that I think has a much larger impact on our economy – salespeople that don’t sell because of their own personal fears or biases.  I happen to be a water snob and entered a gift shop at the airport to buy some bottled water.  The clerk saw me looking at the choices and pointed me to the cheapest bottled water because “buying the expensive water is such a ripoff”.  I then grabbed the most expensive bottle and proceeded to buy hit while he looked at me like a fool.  This same scenario is happening in every company in America; salespeople unwilling to sell the most expensive option because of their own personal biases – robbing from the profits of the business.

All of these are examples of the Sales Prevention Department at work.  I’ve recently been made aware of a few examples at Everon and Kutenda, and I’m doing my best to exterminate them!  Take a hard look at your business and you are sure to find some as well.

Let me know if you find some good ones that are worth sharing!

MRC

The best teachers are able to boil down sometimes difficult concepts into simple, easily understood “nuggets” of wisdom for the rest of us to understand.

Dan Kennedy, famous entrepreneur and marketing guru, boiled down the fundamentals of advertising and marketing into just five points that I think every managed service provider could benefit from when marketing their MSP business.

Here they are:

1. Construct a relevant, irresistible offer
2. Require immediate action
3. Present it to the right prospect
4. In a way that the prospect must pay attention
5. Then establish safety for the buyer

According to Dan, if you succeed at doing these five things, you’ll succeed in any market.  If you fail at these five things, you’ll most likely fail in any market.

Now, it’s easy to look at this list and think, “Duh”, and then go about your merry way.  But I’d encourage you to stop and take a hard look at your current marketing to see if you are really doing each of these five things.  In most cases, I believe that you’ll find that you are not.

I’m taking a look at our marketing right now and I see TONS of room for improvement.  Might bet is that you’ll find the same.

MRC

Life is nothing more than a series of decisions and choices (most of them small) that add up to something in the end. I was recently reminded of this when Mike forwarded me a newsletter written by the folks over at Keys to the vault.com

I think they did a nice job kicking me in the ass and reminding me that each day we get out of bed we are either ready to disturb the world or just looking to get through the day. If the majority of your days are not days where you are ready to disturb the world in pursuit of whatever it is you want (your goals) then you are settling for mediocrity.

This time of year is great for reflection and planning but as they point out most of us are pretty good at setting goals – what decisions are we making daily to ensure they become a reality.

Enjoy their post.

Josh

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We are funny how we think about some things. New Year’s has taken on a special significance for most of us, as if a calendar or certain date has more meaning or somehow is better suited for some things than any other date.

Our tradition seems to be that late December is a time of reflection, nostalgia and resolutions. And so we postpone commitments about diets, money issues, relationship goals and career changes until January 1. Why do we habitually wait until the beginning of a new year to do our thinking, planning and resolving?

It seems to me that having what we want in life is not based on one giant decision or resolution that is made one time each year. Looking at our collective experiences, we know this strategy does not work… if it did, none of us would have ever made the same resolution more than once and we would all have a 100% track record on the achievement of our New Year’s resolutions.

What we want in our life, whether it is health, financial, relationship or spirit related is a result of a never ending stream of consistent decisions. The first decision is the easy one. It is the subsequent, reinforcing, congruent, small decisions made in the heat of battle that are the ones we struggle with and which ultimately sabotage our dreams.

Anyone can make the decision one time. Sadly, our goals are never achieved with one giant inter-galactically huge decision, but rather with the daily decisions that continuously reinforce the initial decision.

How often do you need to remake your decisions? As often as required to have what you want.

Achieving your goals is NOT a problem of goal setting. We are goal setting experts. It is an issue of continuous, consistent decision making.

Bottom line, you get what you tolerate and most people tolerate mediocrity and average.  They settle by refusing to remake the decision day after day.  The quality of your life is directly proportional to what you have made non-negotiable and the decision of non-negotiable is made daily.

At whatever point in your life you get clarity on what you want, whether that be New Year’s Eve or August 7, make the decision to keep making the decision for as long as it takes to achieve the goal…. And then make the decision again.

Achieving your goals and dreams is only the first step. Sustaining that success is the real end game.