Over the past couple years I’ve seen an increasing number of IT service provider websites that advertise free IT assessments. It’s not that a free assessment isn’t of any value – it is indeed and that’s the problem. By not charging to do an IT assessment, MSPs and solution providers are getting the sales cycle off on the wrong foot – diminishing the value they offer and training potential customers to view IT strategy and consultation as a free service. Here are a few tips to help ensure your pre-sales IT assessments are hitting the mark and serving the needs of you and your customers.
Whenever I advise on IT assessments, I ask the partner to think of someone looking to buy a suit. If you own a suit store, and a customer walks in the front door, what do we know about them? We know that they may be in the market for a suit, but that’s it. Would a sign on the door offering a free measurement of their waist have compelled them to come in? Would you immediately drape a measuring tape all over them before you have even introduced yourself? The answers would obviously be NO.
As a good salesperson, you’d ask them what they are looking for and why. Identify the customer’s need and the end goal. From there you can tailor the assessment accordingly.
So how do you do this? You have to qualify them first and then build out your professional IT assessment for a fee. Vital information is required upfront to know what your potential client may be in the market for. Here are a handful of discovery questions many partners use to do just that:
- What are the prospect’s primary lines of business?
- What are their core business functions?
- What is the budget allocated to IT services? Might it change depending on unmet needs? Is there a need to keep IT spending very predictable?
- What areas of their business are dependent on IT resources? To what degree?
- How sensitive are areas of their business to downtime or reduced availability of IT resources?
- Have they experienced any painful issues with their current IT support model that have cost your business time or money or exposed it to risks?
- What centralized IT assets do they have? (servers, applications, etc)
- What critical data do they depend on for operations, or needs to be protected?
- How sensitive is their business to security issues or compromises?
- Does their organization face any compliance issues or standards?
Once you have this information, you can begin formulating a pre-sales assessment and build a framework for a solution that will work to meet their needs and goals.
Remember: Day One, you need to be comfortable selling your assessment to prospects. You must show them that even if they never proceed to a managed services arrangement, the results of your assessment are of value on their own. It will give the prospect a wealth of information relevant to the above questions, and will point very directly to appropriate solutions for them.
Mike Ellison is N-able’s Manager of Partner Development. He can be reached at mellison@n-able.com.