Recently I responded to a commercial I heard on the radio for a local mattress store (it was part of a larger chain, but the phone number they gave was the local store). If memory serves, it was advertising a free “get better sleep” kit.
Because I’m always looking for good marketing ideas and lead generation campaigns, I responded even though I wasn’t tossing and turning at night. The radio ad was pretty good – but upon calling, I was “welcomed” by an auto-attendant. Worse yet, there was no mention of the offer they had made on the radio, and it was unclear exactly how I was to request the kit. (3 Reasons Just “Better Marketing” Won’t Make Your MSP Successful)
Determined, I pressed zero to try to get someone live, which I did; however, the person sounded confused and puzzled, unaware of any “kit” being offered. I asked if they could inquire with the manager, and she said she was the store manager.
There is SO much wrong with the above scenario, but I promise this is going on in YOUR business right now and it IS costing you big – you just don’t know about it. It happens in MY business from time to time, much to my dismay, and even though we are paying attention to it carefully.
WORSE YET, she simply said, “That must be something corporate is doing that they haven’t told us about.” She didn’t try to get my name, phone number, e-mail, or other information to call me back. She simply said she couldn’t help me, and we hung up.
Here are some of the common broken bridges from marketing to sales that you need to examine, repair, strengthen and monitor closely to ensure no prospect or MSP business opportunity is lost because of it.
- The right hand has no idea what the left hand is doing. Specific to the story above, you the owner are running marketing promotions for free information, webinars, seminars or other offers (free assessment), and you fail to tell sales reps or the person answering the phone about the promotion. When the lead comes in, they’re caught off guard and YOU look like a total fool and a horribly dysfunctional organization from the start.
- No attempt to convert web visitors to a lead. The other day I found a pair of designer shoes online that I absolutely loved, but not in my size. After reviewing the website, I saw that this designer uses this style over and over again – so all I had to do was wait until the new season arrived and order the latest pair. However, I could not find ANY way to get notified – no opt-in, not “alert list,” no newsletter. The shoes were not cheap ($1,200), but the vendor failed to get me to become a returning client just for the lack of a simple webform. For MSPs, I rarely see any kind of free information offered. I also see no way for a prospect to book an appointment (call) or an obvious phone number to speak to someone. These are all broken bridges and lost opportunities.
- Webforms don’t work, links don’t work, phone numbers don’t work. Closely tied to the above, another broken bridge is broken tech – over 7% of the MSPs we call have wrong numbers on their websites or the phones don’t work. From busy signals to ringing out to getting to an auto-attendant and then having no way to leave a voice mail – ALL of this is dysfunction that loses opportunities.
- Gross mishandling of the initial call. If you were at Boot Camp, you heard me play some LIVE recordings of leads calling in to not-to-be-named MSPs to hear how horrible the handling of the calls went. The biggest problem is that there is no documented system or training to handle those calls, so anything goes. Further, most are disqualifying the opportunity (the problem they are calling in to fix) rather than the company. Over and over again, we hear BIG opportunities lost because the person answering says, “Sorry, we don’t do break-fix work,” to someone calling in with a project from a large company. I strongly recommend you go back to that session, watch it and let the inbound lead handling process document be your guide to implementing a tighter process for turning inbound leads into long-term, high-paying managed clients.
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