As we all watch our revenues and expenses during this tight economic time it is inevitable that you will have to forecast worst case scenarios in your business and create plans to adjust if worst case becomes reality.

Please don’t misinterpret this blog post, I am still very optimistic that managed service providers can continue to grow their business at a healthy rate in 2009 I just believe in contingency planning as well.

In reading about creative alternatives to layoffs if things go south I have heard of a lot of employers offering their employees the option of layoffs or voluntarily taking an unpaid day off each month to cut down COGS.

Not surprisingly companies with good team cultures are finding that their employees vote to take the unpaid leave rather than having a few people and their families take the hit in times of trouble.

Other companies are cutting back on work weeks and doing things such as job sharing to control costs as they feel the economy out.

I think the most important thing is to involve your people in the decision making process. It may take some quick and dirty education about the P&L and how the company runs but ultimately the group will come up with some creative answers you may not think about.

Thankfully we are not in a situation where we have to employ these types of contingency plans so I cannot report on how they work. What I can tell you is that worst case projections for any IT company this year will have to factor in these types of situations or they are not truly worst case.

I am curious what creative ideas you have employed or have heard about other using to control costs during these times.

Hopefully as businesses continue to cut costs around the world it will mean a continued steady source of managed services growth for us all in 2009 as they outsource IT services.

Josh

I had a phone call with a person in our industry the other week that touched a nerve.

The call was from a person that I really respect and trust, so I really pondered it for a bit before coming to any conclusions.

He expressed to me that he thought I should be very careful about not letting our blog posts and our references to our membership site, MSP Coach, get too “salesy”; that I don’t want to be perceived as selling to our industry.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I understand his point entirely and I know he had good intentions.  If you are offering a professional service of any sort,  you want your marketing to come across as “value-added” and educational to establish credibility.  I get it – and I practice it – both at Everon and with content on the SMBITPros blog.

The reason it touched a nerve with me is that I could hear the negativity in his voice when he mentioned that I may come across as selling.  In fact, what really gets me fired up about this whole thing, is that, for a moment, I even got negative on myself for thinking I was selling too aggressively. It was as if by selling I had done something dirty, and I needed to take a hot shower to clean myself up.

Then I came to my senses.

Negative on selling?  Not me!  I am ashamed of myself for considering for even one moment that I should have any hesitation about selling myself, my ideas, or my services.  Why?  Because I know that everything I sell comes from a good place.  I only sell something if I really believe in it, believe in its value, and will stand behind it 100%.  When  you feel that way about something, you have an obligation to sell it to anyone you think it can add value to.

Do you feel that way about your managed services?  If you don’t, you need to ask yourself why and do whatever it takes to fix it.  You should be so fired up about the services that you offer that you can’t stand it when a prospect doesn’t see the value and decides not to work with you.

Tony Robbins teaches that the person in any sales situation with the most certainty and commitment will eventually influence the other people.  That’s what sales is…having so much certainty and commitment about your products and services that your prospects “inherit” your feelings and decide to work with you over your less certain and less committed competitors.

If you believe in what you have to offer, you should be shouting about it from the rooftops.  What this world needs more than anything right now is more really good, really committed salespeople that believe in what they have to offer.

Think about it.  When was the last time you went to a retail store and had someone really try to sell you?  For the most part, you’ll find young, unmotivated salespeople (if you can call them that) that won’t even give you the time of day.  Often times you’ll find them hovering around in packs talking about what other jobs they are applying for or how bad the economy is.

When was the last time you got a follow up call or a hand-written note from a salesperson to thank you after making a purchase?

The lack of strong sales skills and salespeople that are really interested in doing their best every day is probably the #1 killer of economic productivity in this country.  What would happen if everyone that was responsible for selling every day actually tried to sell?!   We wouldn’t need the $1 trillion + stimulus package we are getting (and will eventually have to pay for).

Selling makes our economy flourish.

Selling feeds your kids.

Selling creates jobs at your company.

Nothing happens until somebody sells something, as the saying goes.

So please take notice: I will be trying to sell whenever I think it makes sense for me and for my prospect; whenever I think I can add value.  And so should you.  Let’s consider it our national duty to do our part to lift the economy by selling at every opportunity.

Mike Cooch

PS – I have found some great examples of very professional salespeople recently and will share those in my next post.

PSS – We cover sales strategies and techniques in our membership site – MSP Coach.  You can join here. 

In the current economy every business owner is asking themselves how they can better manage their cash and while still investing in their business.

A variety of vendors are offering hardware as a service wrapping service around products as well as a variety of creative financing ideas.

HP has recently released two programs to help with this exact problem allowing small business customers to lease between $1,500 and $150,000 at 0%:

0% 12-month same as cash ownership – Invest in new technology while keeping the costs manageable and predictable with this 0% financing plan. At the end of your term, the equipment is all yours for one dollar.

0% 36-month lease – Does leasing make better business sense for you? This zero-percent lease provides a fair-market-value purchasing option at the end of your term.

There are restrictions on the programs but overall they are a good example of the creative ways you can keep project dollars flowing during the recession.

What other creative deals are you putting together to help your clients manage their cash?

Josh

For those of you that aren’t familiar with Dan Kennedy -  you should be.  Dan is one of the leading direct marketing experts in America, and is quite the personality.  He is also a prolific writer on the subjects of entrepreneurship, sales, management of people – and just about everything he writes is worth reading.

On his blog today, he has a post about taking chances and understanding risks and what you can and can’t control.  I thought a particular section of the post was worth sharing here:

Here is what I know: The changes we make will be more important than the changes that occur around us. I know you win by focusing on what you can control. I know that money never really dries up; in different circumstances, it moves differently. There’s always plenty available. So, we’ll prosper. Period. I know that, in microcosm, Halbert was right; there’s hardly a problem that can’t be solved with a great sales letter – the macro version, most problems can be solved with better marketing. You can sell your way out of just about any set of adverse circumstances. (And a whole lot of problems persist purely because of lack of good salesmanship.) I know that we actually do have more to fear than fear itself, but that most decisions made based on fear turn out badly. I know that Pollyanna positivism, whistling in the dark graveyard is dumb, too; you have to create reasons to be optimistic, so you get to make decisions based on positive expectations. It’s foolish and dangerous to just be or act optimistic. There are a lot more things I don’t know. Like whether Gore’s right. So I focus on working with the comparatively short list of things I do know.

As you may be able to tell, Dan is all about personal accountability, and taking control of your own destiny to the greatest degree possible.

I can’t think of any more important message than this right now.  When the economy sucks, it’s easy to throw your hands up in the air and lower your expectations of yourself, your customers, and your business.

Don’t do it!

Continue to invest in yourself and your business every day – approach your day with the right attitude, try new approaches to sticky problems, put in an extra hour of prospecting each day – and you will eventually reap the fruits of your labor.

MRC

www.mspcoach.com

This is the name of the game for 2009. While we have focused a good deal on growing your business in 2009, which there are great opportunities to do, it is just as important to hold on to every client you currently have.

More and more there are companies scaling back or shutting their doors due to the economic environment and with this you cannot afford to lose any client that you can avoid.

I suggest having your service team, virtual CIOs or CTOs create programs to focus in some key areas:

Provide proactive strategic value – Often a client does not know what they need and it is powerful when your team reaches out to them with a “Mr. Client, I know you are in X industry and what we are seeing as a technology trend in that market is X.” This level of conversation will set your team apart from being just the IT provider to the point where your clients believe you are looking out for their business.

Create a program to really understand your client’s business goals and how you can help them – In order to be able to have strategic conversations with your clients your team needs a program or a process to really understand your clients business and industry. We use a solution we call our Business Objectives Call and our team follows a process on how and when to deliver this interaction with our clients. The call generates a high level business discussion where we gain insight into the clients business and provide strategic technology advice on how to meet their business objectives for the quarter.

Establish first position in your customer’s minds - By doing the two items above along with some other planned out interactions we “establish first position in our clients minds.” What does this mean you may ask, it means that if the owner of the business is thinking about a strategic move for his organization one of the first things he or she will want to do is talk to their CTO at Everon. They consider us a part of their management team and value our opinion to the point where any strategic decision needs our input.

Demonstrate your value every chance you get – Lastly, and this applies to everyone in your company from the CEO on down to the administrators, you should be demonstrating your value to your customers. It is easy when you are good at the job of being the IT department for a client on a flat fee to be invisibly working away in the background. You fix issues and the business has no interruptions, the problem with this is in a tight economy someone will look at your line item on the books sooner or later and question what it is they are paying for. I suggest increased communication along with increased reporting and check in calls to ensure your clients know you are working on their behalf 24 hours a day 7 days a week.

If you focus your organization on executing these items in 2009 you will have much greater success holding on to current clients as everyone tightens their belt to weather the recession.

Let me know if there are other things you are doing to increase your value to clients.

Josh