MSPs are finding it increasingly challenging to build enough trust in a short time-frame to get prospects to make a decision in their favor. In an era when the prospect has almost every bit of information possible at their disposal, thanks to the internet, what can you do differently to attract your prospect’s attention and hold it?
Research indicates that about 78% of prospects don’t make an intended purchase if they have a poor buying experience, and around 90% of buyers are willing to pay more in order to enjoy a better buying experience. Earlier, businesses were in much greater control of the buyer experience. However, businesses now find it impossible to control of the buyer experience because there are so many touchpoints available. Connecting with buyers at the right stage, saying the right things to engage them in a meaningful conversation and creating a personalized buyer experience is overwhelming for most MSPs. If MSPs are to offer value to their prospects in this compressed sales cycle, they need to adopt a customer-centric approach to everything that they do.
How MSP Sales Enablement can help?
MSP Sales enablement helps MSPs make that shift towards the go-to-customer business model by addressing the key MSP Marketing challenges.
Content & Assets
The first area that MSP sales enablement touches on is MSP sales and marketing collateral creation. MSP sales and marketing enablement involves offering MSPs the mechanisms they need to create personalized sales assets. Most MSP sales enablement platforms accomplish this by adopting a template-based approach to collateral creation and through MSP marketing tools to personalize and share them with prospects–all on demand.
Process
The second element that MSP sales enablement can fix is the process. As discussed earlier, the entire sales process has now undergone tremendous change thanks to the power-shift in the buyer’s favor. This scenario mandates an unorthodox sales process–one that is prospect-centric. However, a common mistake made by many businesses is to make only fragmentary changes to the sales or marketing process to match the modern buyer, while leaving the others untouched. Some piecemeal examples include automating email marketing, adding PPC campaigns to the marketing mix or engaging in generic lead nurturing. Sales enablement, on the other hand, adopts a holistic approach to the entire sales process, empowering MSPs from every angle. Two key areas of the sales process that sales enablement touches upon include
Sales workflows–by creating and automating the entire MSP sales process and not just a part of it. Every fragment of the MSP sales process is looked at carefully and streamlined to fit into a pre-approved sales model. MSP Sales enablement leaves no loose ends. Even the minutest of details such as which collateral is to be used at what stage of the sales cycle, or how often is a prospect to be followed-up with, is clearly defined.
Technology
MSP Sales enablement offers MSPs the tools and support that they need to accomplish their sales goals. Examples include-
MSP marketing tools that assist you in lead generation
Make sure your MSP marketing automation software offers you a variety of tools for lead generation. Lead generation campaigns, e-mail drips, effective, personalized landing pages, personal web pages and even personalized social media posts on popular social networking sites such as Linkedin and Twitter pages are the must-haves.
MSP marketing tools that convert cold leads into hot
Sorting hot leads from cold and nurturing them can be a daunting task for a MSP. Make sure your MSP marketing automation software offers smart lead scoring tools that tell you which lead is most interested at any specific point in time, marketing tools that send automated e-mail drips appropriate to the individual interest levels of each of your prospects, and tools that allow you to monitor your prospects across all media channels including the web, social media and e-mails.
Pre-packaged content to help you say it right
One of the most intimidating aspects of running a business is developing the content for all your marketing and sales communications. By choosing the right MSP marketing automation software you will have access to carefully-designed, branded content for e-mails, websites, social media and print. With ready-to-use content, you can focus on developing relationships.
MSP marketing tools to build your brand
An ideal MSP marketing automation software would provide you with access to automated tools to build a strong social media presence through branded Facebook fan pages, Twitter profiles and Linkedin pages for your MSP business.
MSP marketing tools to build & maintain relationships
Strengthen the bond you share with your prospects through tools that help you stay in touch with them. With the right MSP marketing automation software you can easily create and send e-mail campaigns using pre-defined templates and an easy-to-use, drag and drop e-mail editor.
MSP marketing tools for easy and effective contact management
With the right marketing automation software you can manage your contact database and preferences at a click—from a single database and automatically segment your contacts into different categories based on their online behavior and preferences.
MSP marketing tools for sales and marketing materials creation
Creating personalized brochures, flyers, presentations, e-mails, post cards, advertisement banners, e-magazines won’t be a challenge anymore provided you choose the right automation system.
Mobile applications to keep you connected
Make sure your marketing automation software offers you the option to stay you connected with your leads from wherever you are using mobile devices.
By choosing the right marketing automation software you can enjoy total sales-marketing alignment so your MSP business can take benefits from an efficient marketing and sales approach.