Mastering the Managed Services Sales Pitch

Selling and marketing managed services needn't be a struggle. Follow this roadmap to success, straight from the experts.

By Rich Freeman

Gary Pica still has ugly memories of his early days in managed services.

Pica is currently president of TruMethods LLC, a consulting firm in Moorestown, N.J., that advises managed service providers, but he used to be an MSP himself. And, like so many of his peers, he struggled initially with sales and marketing. Finding good leads was a constant challenge, qualifying prospects was even harder, and potential customers seemed unimpressed by his collateral, which emphasized his toolset and IT management philosophy. "I was shocked that my customers didn't care about all that technical stuff as much as I did," he recalls.

Through trial and painful error, though, Pica eventually figured out what works. He revamped his messaging to concentrate on issues that business owners care about. He hired an inside and an outside salesperson, and taught them what to say and what not to say when speaking with clients. And he learned how to tell a promising lead from a likely dead end. The results speak for themselves: Pica grew his business into a multimillion-dollar winner with more than 7,000 end points under management before selling it in 2005.

Pica's story starkly illustrates the degree to which channel pros must completely rethink their approach to sales and marketing if they wish to find success in managed services. It also points out the dangers of neglecting to do so.

"Twenty percent of the people in this industry make all the money," Pica observes. "The 80 percent are trying to figure out why."

ARTICULATING THE VALUE
It's no great mystery why MSPs often find sales and marketing such a chore: Most of them are engineers. "We got into this because we love computers," says Karl Palachuk, CEO of KPEnterprises Business Consulting Inc., an MSP in Sacramento, Calif. "It never occurred to us to love marketing or love sales."

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