Are you pitching your managed IT services to the CEO of an account? Pitching your managed IT services to a CEO is very different from pitching to someone with a technical background and persona. While you may be able to impress the CTO of a company by discussing tech and how you can support their in-house IT team on routine tasks such as backup and recovery,  it is a  whole different ball game when it comes to the CEO. The CEO doesn’t care much about the tech. That’s what the CTO is there for. The CEO wants to know what you bring to the table that adds value to their brand. So, in order to resonate with the CEO, your messaging has to be focused on the big picture. From a CEO’s perspective, you need to help them understand how being a victim of cyber-attack can prove disastrous for their business and brand, as a whole. Make sure you speak about the following repercussions.

• Affects the brand image negatively: Business disruption due to downtime or having your important business data including customer and vendor details stolen reflects poorly on their brand. 
• It can cause the business to lose customers: Discuss how downtime and bad publicity will make their existing customers take their business elsewhere as they may not feel safe sharing their personally identifiable data–PII  with the company anymore. 
• Can cost the company quite a bit financially: Discuss how data breach makes organizations liable to follow certain disclosure requirements mandated by the law. These most likely require would require the business to make announcements on popular media, which can prove expensive. Also stress on the fact that the business will then have to invest in positive PR to boost their brand value.
• It makes the business vulnerable to lawsuits: Data breach or downtime can have far reaching repercussions including being sued by customers whose Personally Identifiable Information (PII) has been compromised or stolen, or who suffered significant losses due to the business’s downtime. 

Drive home the point that the scope of IT security is very wide and it may even be a bit unfair to solely pin the responsibility for IT security on their in-house IT department. Help them understand that security breaches almost always have an internal root cause. Once the CEO realizes that IT security is not just about securing servers and creating backups, but about educating everyone within the organization about IT best practices and cyber hygiene, they will look at your role differently. You need to help them understand that IT  is everyone’s business, and that includes everybody working in their company, from the C-level execs to the newly hired intern. 

By talking about these very industry-specific IT vulnerabilities with your clients from the hospitality industry, you will send the message across that you understand their sector and related IT risks very well. This will help you gain a upper hand in the sales process. Next week, we come back with more tips on the same topic. Meanwhile, don’t forget to check out the most comprehensive MSP marketing and sales program in the industry today! A blend of ready-to-use sales and marketing content, tools and support, the MSP Advantage Program is used by more than 10,000 MSP partners, worldwide. Please visit out our website, www.mspadvantageprogram.com to learn more.