Yeah...maybe it does.
Are you having problems landing new clients or converting your break-fix clients to managed services?  If that’s the case, maybe you should step back and look at how you're positioning your products and services in the market.   Maybe just maybe your offer sucks?

In this episode of the IT Provider Network, I am going to share with you a new way of looking at how you communicate with your prospects and clients and how you can close more business.

<INTRO>

I’ve spent the last year or so really studying online marketing, and marketing and selling in general.  I’ve attended a ton of conferences, availed myself to some of the best thought leaders, and I’ve come to realize that I should have started studied the phycology of marketing and selling a lot sooner in my career.

So much of what we do and say can influence the minds of the buyer.  I have talked about the belief of the sales team in recent episodes, but today I want to talk about the beliefs of the buyer and how what you offer and how you offer it is a big part of their buying decision.

First, let's talk about your offering.

What are you offering?  How are you pitching managed services to your clients?  If you like many of us, you are pitching some form of the four blocks that Gary Pica has traveled the world telling us about at conference after conference.   With all due respect to Gary, it’s old news, and there were probably three other managed services providers that already walked into your prospect and pitched the same thing.
The Four Blocks
If you haven’t heard of the four blocks, here's a quick introduction.  They consist of four distinct service groups.

* Centralized Services – This is everything you can do with your RMM tool. Patching, Disk Cleanups, Anti-Virus, Anti-Malware and all of the other stuff that you can leverage to your client base.
* Network Administration – This is what Gary calls you “Superpower”. Personally, it has never been for my company, but Network Administration consists of everything that you do for your clients to standardize them.  Network Administration is documentation, standards adoption, server maintenance and things like that.
* Helpdesk – This one is pretty self-explanatory and probably the bulk what most full-service MSP’s are really delivering regardless of what they are selling.
* Technical Consulting or VCIO - This is the part of your service delivery where your technical consultant which may be you meets with the client and helps them make a technology budget, strategize on future direction, and utilize technology in a way that moves them forward.

If that looks a lot like your offering, congratulations, you have a commodity offering.   Except perhaps the last one, technical consulting, your prospect doesn’t really care.

Unless they have had a significant security breach or some regulatory body is pressuring them,  they don’t care.  Patching, Spam, Virus,  they don’t care,  believe me, I’ve seen their eyes glaze over many many times.

So how should you define your offering?  If you need to include more,  your offering needs to include things that fulfill THEIR desires and alleviates THEIR fears.

Here’s a couple of tips on really zeroing in on what they want.   Remembers buyers don’t buy what they need; they buy what they want.
What your prospect wants
So what do they want... they want the same things you want as a business owner.

* To attract more business
* To be more competitive
* To have a more efficient workforce
* To put more money to the bottom line