Contributed by – Rachel Baker
A common challenge for MSPs is that even though a lead has warmed up to high or hot interest level, when you finally reach them on the phone you find that they’re not a good fit, or they’re not interested. Data shows that at least 50% of a company’s prospects aren’t a good fit for what it sells – regardless of industry. Investing in your MSP business is similar to financial investing – you need to diversify your sources to be successful.
If most of your leads are coming from purchased lists, you are probably experiencing low open rates and high hard bounce or unsubscribe rates. A purchased list is going to consistently be one of the lowest sources of quality leads, so you want to think about additional lead sources to add to your database. Here are some additional ways you can generate more leads.
- Ask for Referrals – After a positive experience, 83% of customers would be happy to provide a referral. But salespeople aren’t asking — just 29% of customers end up giving a referral unsolicited. The Mindmatrix platform contains an email drip campaign called the Customer Feedback Campaign. You can review this and use these emails (or create custom ones) to reach out to existing customers with the goal of building a relationship and generating referrals and testimonials.
- Attend Networking Events – Networking is an important part of brand recognition and relationship building. Consider including networking opportunities in your budget. Attend the event to get to know some folks by name, so they recognize yours when you follow up later. If that’s not a possibility, consider other networking events, such as chambers of commerce, BNI groups and other industry groups.
- Post More Often to your Blog – Quality blog posts are a good way to drive traffic to your website and educate your prospects (it also helps you rank higher in SEO). Once per week is a good frequency for posting to your MSP website’s blog.
- Website Chat –Mindmatrix added and staffs a chat box on our own company website, and this has generated a pretty large pool of leads and prospects. If there is someone on your team who can staff this during work hours, this can be a great way to meet and educate prospects.
- Mindmatrix Yellow Pages tool – With this Mindmatrix tool, you can identify businesses based on industry and zip code. This doesn’t name individual contacts, but you can use the list to identify prospective companies, then perform research on their website and LinkedIn to find the right person for outreach.
Hubspot compiled research that the salespeople they interviewed spend just one-third of their day actually talking to prospects. They spend 21% of their day writing emails, 17% entering data, another 17% prospecting and researching leads, 12% going to internal meetings, and 12% scheduling calls. With MSP Advantage program, some of these tasks are already automated for your sales team (using Mindmatrix and your CRM), so if they have more time available, it makes sense that the first way you’d want them to use that time is making calls. However, there may be other ways of spending that time to give more results in the long-term. Is sales activity being gauged on sheer numbers (call time/# of calls made), or is lead quality also being taken into consideration? Having an open conversation with your sales team about where they’re currently spending their efforts, and how they could change that up to focus more effort on quality contacts (research, emails, LinkedIn, obviously phone calls) should lead to more quality appointments and conversions.
My recommendations would be to focus on improving the quality of leads you’re identifying and on having conversations with prospects that give you more valuable information, rather than on increasing the volume of calls you’re making.
Rachel Baker works as a high-level marketing strategy consultant with Mindmatrix, volunteering marketing and strategic planning services. She assists businesses of all sizes seeking to build relationships through marketing strategy and communications consulting.