Let me let you in on a secret, none of your customers care about their IT! Well, not until it isn’t working! Now, bear with me and let me explain, because I am indicative of your customers in that I have run my own business for over 20 years, I’m good at what I do and I understand the importance that IT plays in my business; in fact when it stopped working, I knew exactly how much money it was costing me, by the minute!
But to me, and this will be true of your customers, my IT infrastructure was a cost of business investment, in exactly the same way as my staff, company cars, offices and all business overheads are. I never woke up in the morning and drove to my business just dying to spend money on my IT infrastructure. Why? Well because there was no desire created by the product; IT systems aren’t Rolex Watches, Gucci, a luxury holiday or Rolls Royce, products that create desire and an ambition of ownership linked to high spending.
I get told by all our customers in the IT sector that market conditions have never been harder for MSP's and VAR's and this is true. With the shift towards cloud services, ever-decreasing margins from hardware and software and rapid consolidation in the channel (all of which have incidentally already led to the channel in the States shrinking by an estimated 36% since 2008), the sector has the “Perfect Storm” of challenges.
Now, and this will be controversial, but the IT sector has only got itself to blame for the current predicament. It has enjoyed organic growth for the last 10 – 20 years and never taken the time to show customers just why they should increase spending on IT infrastructure and the benefits it would provide.
In general, and I will be representative of the problem, the IT sector has let customers assess value for themselves and now, when times are tough, no one sees the value in IT infrastructure investment to their business, so guess what, they have stopped spending, unless it’s broken. No one showed me the benefits of investment in my IT; no one showed me how I could make more money from investment in my IT infrastructure, how I could save money or be able to sleep better at night, due to compliance to legislation.
And worse, with most UK resellers now refocusing their businesses and transitioning towards MSP, Consultancy or Cloud Provider status, the battle for new customers is well and truly underway, so now is the time to carve out your niche and make sure you are targeting the RIGHT customers.
As sales, marketing and business development specialists in the IT sector, our marketing strategy reviews for IT companies will give you a blueprint for growing your business to meet your business growth objectives, based on our decades of industry specific experience, prioritising those activities which in our experience will deliver the best ROI on your marketing spend and help to yield you the right customers to grow your business through 2017 and beyond.
You see, we've been there and done it ourselves, so we know what works and what doesn't for VAR’s, MSP’s and all IT companies. We are “current” in terms of the market conditions prevailing today and have already built highly targeted sales, marketing and business development campaigns for MSP’s and VAR’s, building bespoke product offerings including public Wi-Fi services, secure cloud based hosted desktops and traditional IT infrastructure services for companies looking expand into the Pharmaceuticals, Law, Independent Schools, Recruitment, Accountancy and Financial sectors, to name just a few.
In many cases we build and run the campaigns from the ground floor up, operating as your outsourced sales and business development resources partners, or alternatively just build the highly targeted and effective marketing campaigns required to feed your sales operation and to drive growth to your business.
Alternatively, we can just complete the marketing review for you, in order to identify areas of immediate growth available to your business, (as invariably they are already in the 4 walls of your business, providing you know where to look), and to identify new routes to market for your existing product or services offerings.
If you would like to find out more, then please contact me on andrewb@virtuosoconsultancy.co.uk when I would be delighted to hear from you to discuss your growth aspirations and how we can work together to help you achieve them.
