Here is one very effective method where marketing and sales teams at Managed Service Providers (MSPs) can work together to grow your business.
Growth teams can better align by collectively promoting and actively following-up on training events that you offer prospects. The partnership may result in new sales activities and potentially better sales results.
Here is a list of direct sales activities generated from training and education sessions that you can host in partnership with a company like PoplarMSP:
- New call premise: promoting upcoming event.
- New call premise: follow-up dials, post-event surveys and feedback.
- Booking first time appointments (FTA) when following-up post event.
- Using feedback to inform future interactions.
How training may offer better sales results
Consider the following scenario:
You have “John Doe” marked as the key contact at “MS Consulting” — a prospect that is slowly aging-out in your CRM. Your Inside Sales Representative (ISR) has called John multiple times over the years — to no avail. John is perhaps ghosting your ISR or at least has not been provided with enough value to return the calls. John may be tired of the same old premise from the ISR checking in to find out if your company is a top-of-mind number-two candidate, should the incumbent fail one too many times.
John subscribes to your newsletter. Despite not engaging with your ISR, clicks on the newsletter and engages. Perhaps he signs up for a webinar about Microsoft Teams training or security best practices. Perhaps, he sees value in signing up a new employee who needs training.
Your ISR follows up with John post-event under the premise of post-event feedback. The purpose of the call is to genuinely find out how the event met John’s expectations and this information is documented. However, while your ISR happens to be on that call, he/she asks about John’s technology and the conversation potentially results in an appointment (FTA). The ISR fill the sales funnel with a warm lead — through the sales process. MS Consulting may turn out to be a new client. Also, the interaction may result in positive word-of-mouth recommendations.
Obviously, this is an optimistic scenario, in an industry where it can take years to close a deal but consider the end results of the new opportunities your training program creates:
- ISR has a different premise to work with. One that offers a genuine benefit (learning) to the prospect.
- ISR can take a two-pronged approach during the follow-up call, which may result in an FTA or a private training session being booked (win-win)
- May result in a quicker sales cycle.
- May reduce the number of marketing and sales touches it takes to get that prospect into your sales funnel.
- Tracking successes may become less cumbersome.
A training program at your MSP will better align your marketing and sales team, improve your sales process and create more sales activities. At Smart Dolphins IT Solutions and PoplarMSP, we leverage the education and training services and curriculums that we have developed over the years. Our sales results have increased, sales cycles in some cases are shorter and overall satisfaction is higher. Both business units enjoy better perceived value-of-brand as a result.
If you have more questions about the how, please contact us.