Currently viewing the tag: "managed service providers"
This is the second post in a series – the first post can be found here.
In my previous post, I told you that the first step in getting higher fees for your managed services is to Be Known.
Now, that isn’t just a “fluff” recommendation. Research from RainToday – a leading publisher of sales and marketing information – shows that professional service providers of all types that have better brand visibility than their competitors in their local markets are consistently able to charge prices 20-50% higher than the competition. Buyers are more comfortable and confident with brands that they recognize, that have been established for years, and that seem to demonstrate success via their marketing activity.
You must market your brand consistently and actively over time.
The second piece of advice I have for managed service provider to command higher fees is to Get Confident.
One of the hardest thing most salespeople (or business owners acting as salespeople) do in the sales process is talk about price. The problem is this:
If you are not confident in your prices, nobody else is going to be either!
If you can’t look a prospect square in the eye, tell them what you are going to charge them, and confidently justify why you are going to charge them that much – you will have to learn to accept lower prices, but that is what you will continue to get.
No prospect is going to argue that you should charge them more! Most are going to argue that you should charge them less – that’s their job.
When they ask…you may waffle. If you waffle, they will eat you alive. You must learn to be confident! When they sense that confidence, you will literally transfer confidence to them. They will know that you know what you are talking about, that you are a professional, and that you will stand your ground.
So, how to get confident? Here are my suggestions:
- Realize that successful competitors in the marketplace ARE charging more than you are – and doing just fine, thank you. If you are reading this post, and your are struggling with prices, I can assure you that you are charging significantly less than the most successful players in the market. If they can do it, YOU can do it.
- Deliver a level of service that you are absolutely proud of. Bend over backwards for your clients. When you do this, you’ll be confident enough to demand and get higher prices.
- Establish and refuse to budge from a “No Discounting” policy. Learn to explain that “you can’t deliver the quality of service our clients expect unless we are charging enough to be able to staff and operate our business properly”. A good client will understand this. If they don’t, you don’t want them as a client.
- Get some sales training! I can’t believe the number of MSP’s I talk with each month that have had no sales training, aren’t getting sales training, and oftentimes don’t even think they need sales training. If you are not continuously sharpening your skills around sales conversation techniques, you are falling behind every day. Good sales training teaches you how to position your service prices and defend them from attack.
In the end, nobody can give you confidence - it’s up to you to create your own confidence.
When you do, your clients will respond in kind, and you will be able to sell at higher prices.
Mike
0
It seems that pricing remains a mystery for a large number of managed service providers. A large percentage of the questions we get from partners are focused on how they should price their services in general, and specifically how to position themselves to be able to charge higher prices.
So what is the secret to being able to charge higher prices than your competitors?
The reality is that there is no silver bullet, but rather a number of things that add up to you having a premium position in the mind of your prospects and customers. I’m going to cover the most important of these factors in a series of posts.
I’m going to start with the most important factor, which is:
Being known.
Being known? What does that mean, you may ask?
It’s really quite simple: research studies show that the best known service providers in a market command prices 20-50% higher than their competitors. This is true across professional services providers of all types – lawyers, accountants, consultants, etc. – according to a benchmark study from RainToday.com titled “The One Piece of Advice You Need to Get the Fees You Deserve.”
The good news is that you don’t have to run incredibly expensive mass-market branding campaigns like something from Coca Cola to accomplish this, you just need to be known by the people that our ideal prospects in your target market – a much smaller and more manageable target audience.
How do you get to be better known?
Consistent marketing over time that uses “power messaging” that is on target for your audience.
In other words, say the right things to the right people consistently over time.
Most managed service providers are really struggling with this. My experience is that their biggest problem is the “consistently over time” part of the equation – they tend to do a little marketing then give up because it didn’t produce immediate results.
Getting immediate results from every bit of marketing you do is one of the biggest fallacies and false expectations that has been set upon our industry. People don’t jump out of their seat to buy managed services the first time they get a clever campaign from you – it just doesn’t work that way.
It’s such a problem that I considered titling this post “Why expecting immediate ROI from your marketing campaigns is killing your business!”.
Would you jump out of your seat to buy legal services from a lawyer the first time you received a well-worded letter of introduction from them?
Of course not.
But when it came time to buy legal services, would you be more likely to buy from the lawyer that had been consistently in front of you over time, that published interesting research for you to digest, and that had relevant experience with other in your industry and situation? And would you likely be willing to pay more for this lawyer than for another that you’d never heard from.
Of course you would.
If you want to get more business, and command higher prices, you must Be Known.
In order to Be Known, you must keep your marketing efforts running continuously over time. There are other factors, of course, and I will cover them in my next posts. But if you don’t get this lesson, I’m afraid that the rest won’t matter.
Mike
Many managed service providers think that social media is for “other” businesses – that businesses like theirs don’t need to waste time on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Uh huh…and the Internet is a passing fad, too.
There are two realities that managed service providers – and just about every other business owner – needs to come to grips with:
- People and businesses do research on the Internet before they decide who to work with.
- Social media is playing an increasingly important role in determining what will be found when researching on the Internet.
Clues about the importance of social media in search have started to be more visible as Google has experimented with including social media posts in their search results and attempting to steal the Facebook “Like” button’s thunder with its +1 button.
But if there was any doubt left about the direction of this trend, the recent developments by Bing, covered in this article, leave little to doubt.
“Bing is no Google,” you may say. “Who cares?”
Don’t bury your head in the sand. If you and your business are not embracing social media, you will fall further behind in the search engines over time and miss out on opportunities.
I’ve pasted the article in its entirety below.
Mike
Bing laces search results with Facebook connections
By Edward C. Baig, USA TODAY
Starting today, folks who use Bing search will receive personalized results based on what their trusted Facebook friends like.
Microsoft research found that 90% of people surveyed seek advice from friends and family before making a decision. And 80% will delay such a decision until their pals give their stamp of approval. So Microsoft, via a partnership with Facebook, is hoping to leverage such relationships through its Bing search engine.
If you’re signed into Facebook at the time you conduct a search — for example, locating wineries in Napa, choosing a digital camera or merely looking for interesting articles on a given topic — you’ll see the names (and in some cases) faces of Facebook friends who happened to click on the “Like” button next to an item inside Facebook. You’ll received personalized search results based on who your friends are and what they like. Microsoft says “sponsored” search results will also show up where they’ve always been.
“All this data coming from Likes is potentially very valuable,” says analyst Greg Sterling, a principal at Sterling Market Intelligence, who points out that there may be incentives offered by companies — a $2 coupon off latte, for example — for Facebook members who click on Like.
Of course, friends may not always provide the expertise you need about a subject, so Bing also taps into the collective Likes of members of the Facebook community to help clue you in on top trends and articles.
Bing has slowly but surely been gaining market share, but it still trails Google by a wide margin. According to April ComScore rankings, Bing has a 14.1% market share in the U.S., compared with 65.4% for Google and 15.9% for Yahoo. While no one expects Bing to overtake Google overnight, Sterling says, “Over the long term there might be some shift.”
Analyst Charlene Li of Altimeter Group agrees. And she believes Google, which has made its own attempts at social search, has to be concerned. “How much sleep are they losing over this?” she asks. “A lot.”
For Bing director Lisa Gurry, the way to compete with Google is to change the game. “This is an example of how we think we can change that game. We think we’re kind of scratching the surface of what we can offer in this realm.”
If you’re looking to travel to a city, you can see which of your Facebook friends live in the vicinity. You can do expanded Facebook profile searches through Bing. And the search engine will display deals posted on Facebook for various companies and brands — when you’re renting a car, say. You can also share shopping lists through Bing and Facebook.
Microsoft points out that vast amounts of content are shared on Facebook each month. Microsoft says privacy won’t be an issue and people who click Like inside Facebook are effectively willing to share. But Li says there’s a “delicate line” between something that’s creepy and something that’s genuinely useful. “Likes have social currency. Think twice about Liking something.”
