For over two decades, MSPs/VARs/IT service companies owners, have been coming to me to fix their lead generation and new customer acquisition problems, asking me to create campaigns that
bring highly qualified, highly motivated prospects to their door, eager and willing to be sold and unoffended or dissuaded by “high” fees…and I have. However, all too often I send them prospects who ARE motivated, and CAN be persuaded to buy now, only to have the entire process come to a screeching halt due to nonexistent inbound lead handling and sales systems that take the prospect over the finish line. ANY marketing efforts will fall flat due to poor execution in the sales process, and ultimately stunt your MSP’s growth. Often I can lift sales for a client simply by STARTING with examining and fixing the bridge between the leads coming in and the sales process. Practically no-one is hiring me to fix this problem, and yet it is such an important piece of growing any MSP business.
Here are four of the common broken bridges from marketing to sales that are stalling your MSP’s Growth.
- The right hand has no idea what the left hand is doing. 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. Repeatedly, 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 and completely wasting the opportunity to gain a new repeat customer. (More on this subject here)
You need to have an inbound lead handling process document be your guide to implementing a tighter process for turning inbound leads into long-term, high paying managed clients.
Download FREE Inbound Lead Form For Your Team HERE
