Guest Blogger – Megan Cramer
As a leader in MSP business, you already know it brings nothing but headaches when companies who are ill fit for one another try to do business together. Imagine trying to squeeze into a pair of pants that are too small and attempting a graceful yoga routine. It’s not comfortable, it’s not pretty, and frankly, it can be embarrassing.
It may seem counterintuitive – new MSP business is new revenue, and that’s good for my company, right? From a very simplistic viewpoint, yes; but we’re thinking big picture here. An ideal client base is one that won’t churn out, one that won’t result in nasty online reviews due to a working relationship that was never meant to be, and one that will ultimately put more business (and more revenue) on your plate.
So how do you go about building the profile of your ideal client? The first, and easiest thing you can do is look at those with whom you already have successful relationships. You’re going to find commonalities among this group. It could be a number of attributes, or a combination of those, that these ideal companies possess – Industry, company size, company revenue, location, even the company culture and expectations come into play. The first three items on this list of examples are relatively static and easy to pinpoint. The latter really shine through during your sales meetings with the decision makers during your sales process.
When you’re a brand new MSP business, you of course won’t be able to look to your current customer relationships to build your ideal client profile. This is where you’ll need to do a little bit of creative thinking. Are you intimately familiar with a certain type of setup or software used in a particular industry? Can you calculate your cost per seat and build models based on the hypothetical clients’ number of end users? With those numbers in mind, you’ll have a good idea of the size of the company with whom it would make sense to work, and what their budget would need to look like in order to do business with you.
Once you have your ideal client profile fleshed out, you can start prospecting and generating the best quality leads for your unique offering. Use targeted messaging to hone in on this group and you’re likely to start on a solid foundation and head toward a lasting business relationship.
Megan Cramer is a Marketing and Sales Enablement Consultant at Mindmatrix, providing strategic consultation on marketing and sales best practices, assisting with technical needs, and interfacing with leaders in our organization to help develop new processes and program additions to best serve our clients.