Schools Resellers: On your marks…..

It’s May half-term already, and as all those IT companies who provide services to schools will know, that means that in just a few weeks time the silly season will begin!

Because, naturally enough, to avoid disruption to lessons and school life, every school will want their network projects carried out during the 6-8 weeks of the school summer holidays.

If you’re a reseller who specialises in the schools sector, the pressure is really on during those weeks of the year, and often resources will be stretched to breaking point. In particular, there tend to be a lack of people with the combination of technical, commercial and project management skills that are needed to bring these types of projects to successful completion on time and on budget. 

Projects that over-run, under-deliver or cause disruption to school life in September can be costly for resellers, who risk not only reputational damage but significant loss of income if customers perceive that projects haven’t gone according to plan.

That is why Virtuoso Consultancy now provides resellers and MSPs with expert project management services. We can step in at times of peak workload and manage technically, commercially and politically complex IT projects, to time and budget, on your behalf.

Being from a reseller background, with extensive experience in successful project delivery to both schools and SMBs, we offer a safe pair of hands who understands the commercial, operational, political and technical complexities of delivering these projects, and as such we are up to speed almost immediately, minimising your time investment.

We are adept at dealing with and co-ordinating network engineers, in-house ICT Managers, the school’s senior leadership team, the sales and engineering departments at the reseller and numerous third parties to deliver IT projects successfully and on-time. We also offer the option to “white label” ourselves as a member of your team.

From relatively simple network upgrades, through to the complete replacement of all aspects of the IT infrastructure at one of the UK’s most prestigious Independent Schools, our team have extensive experience in planning, managing, mitigating risk and successfully delivering network projects in both schools and SMB’s.

For more information please contact me on janeg@virtuosoconsultancy.co.uk or call us on 07788 227654.

Project Management is just one of the tools on the “Swiss Army Knife” of services we offer to MSPs and VARs. To find out about our other services please see https://it-business-growth-strategies.blogspot.co.uk/2018/05/the-business-swiss-army-knife-for-msps.html

MSPs: How does your website differentiate you from your competitors?

If you are typical of the MSPs and VARs we deal with day-in day-out, then you’ll probably say that your website reflects what you did a few years ago, but to be honest life moves on so fast in the IT industry that now it doesn’t accurately reflect a lot of what you do and how you’ve evolved.

That probably also means it isn’t very compelling to your target audience any more.

To give an example of how much difference this makes, let’s imagine I am a new prospect who’s searching for an IT provider. For the sake of this example let’s say I am the owner/office manager of an SMB in the pharmaceuticals industry. I’m looking for a new IT provider perhaps because I’ve had an incident (downtime, ransomware, data breach etc) that has demonstrated that my current IT supplier is not doing a great job, so now I’ve ended up looking at a few IT supplier’s websites, either because I’ve heard of them through their marketing, or because someone I know has recommended them or because I’ve done a google search.

Your company already has several clients in the pharmaceutical industry and has recently launched a range of services around data security and network resilience. But as it’s been a while since you last updated your website, there aren’t actually any testimonials or case studies from those pharma companies and nor is there a sector specific page for the pharma industry. And your product and services offerings page on the website looks fairly “vanilla”, talking about the normal offerings around IT support, installations and the like rather than your newly developed services.

The odds are the prospect, who has visited your website, won’t perceive that you are a good match or have a solution to their problems and is unlikely to call you. That’s a real shame because it actually sounds as though you would have been a perfect match to their needs.

But let’s remember nowadays (depending on which piece of research you read) buyers complete 40-70% of the buying journey online before they ever pick up the phone to a potential supplier. So if your online presence doesn’t reflect how you can solve your customer’s problems, then you will lose the business to a competitor.

Having been in your position running an MSP, I know how important projects like website content nearly always end up at the bottom of the “to do” list. There’s always a fire to fight (if not several!) somewhere else in the business that takes precedence.

And of course it’s not something you can easily outsource as a project. There are plenty of people who’ll build you a website that looks great, but writing the compelling content to go on it has got to be done by you the business owner, and that’s where the time-block occurs.

Luckily, this is one of the many scenarios where Virtuoso Consultancy can help. Because we come from an MSP background, and we specialise in marketing and business development, with just one briefing phone call with you, to understand your products and services and your target audience, we can go away and write the copy for your website for your approval. Because we’re technical we can understand your products and services without you having to spend lots of time explaining. Because we’re commercial professionals, we can take those products and services and deliver compelling content in language that will resonate with your target audience.

Website content creation is just one of the “swiss army knife” of tools that we offer to time-strapped owners of MSPs and VARs, who need a resource who is immediately up to speed and will just get on with the job and get it done with minimal input needed.

My fellow directors and I have over 40 years combined experience in growing businesses and can deliver sales, technical, operational, business development and marketing experience that is IT sector specific, straight to your door.

Whether you need us for a few days a week, a few days a month or for a one-off project, we can help take the strain and get your “to do” list back on track.

If this post has resonated with you and you would like to explore how we can help you, then please do not hesitate to contact me on 07788 227654 or by email at janeg@virtuosoconsultancy.co.uk

For more information about our services please our website http://www.virtuosoconsultancy.co.uk/IT_Companies

To read more posts covering all aspects of sales, marketing and business development for MSP’s and VAR’s, please visit our blog; https://it-business-growth-strategies.blogspot.co.uk/

IT Companies: How to Avoid Coming Second in a Pitch

We’ve all been there. We’ve met with a new prospective customer, listened to their requirements, then spent hours or days putting together a perfect solution for them and technically verifying that everything we’re proposing will work.

Then we’re invited to meet with the customer to present our proposal – which is more work, more prep, but that’s all part of the sales process for IT infrastructure companies, and it is the accepted norm in our industry that all this will be provided to the customer for free.

Then the customer informs you that they have given the business to your competitor. And at that, perhaps it’s a competitor who you believe can’t deliver a technical solution or support service that’s half as good as yours.

It’s galling to lose out to a competitor, especially one you suspect cannot technically deliver the standard of service that you can.

But the fact that you didn’t win the pitch means that you didn’t manage to communicate to the prospective customer that you would be the best organisation to meet their needs. Someone else stepped in with the glossy brochure, the slick presentation and an ability to convince the customer that they could meet their needs, such that the customer signed on the dotted line with them not you. 

Whether or not your rival can technically deliver is a moot point. Because they won the business, not you. And yes you have the consolation that if that supplier doesn’t deliver, then perhaps in a year or 2 years time you’ll get the opportunity to re-pitch to the customer.

But wouldn’t you have rather won the business now?

Virtuoso Consultancy work with IT companies to help them achieve new business success by:

• Writing/re-writing your sales materials to be compelling to your target customer
• Qualifying and understanding customer outcomes
• Putting together compelling pitches
• Strategising leads to maximise the opportunity
• Understanding the politics at play
• Proposal writing
• Mentoring business owners and/or sales teams
• Presentation writing and/or delivery
• Effective sales follow-up processes

Being from a reseller background, with extensive experience in how to strategise leads and design winning sales pitches, including a conversion ratio of 70-80% of first meetings into customers, we bring a wealth of commercial experience to MSPs and VARs.

Whether you need us for a few days a week, a few days a month or for a one-off project, we can help you win more business.

If this post has resonated with you and you would like to explore how we can help you win more business, then please do not hesitate to contact me on 07788 227654, or email janeg@virtuosoconsultancy.co.uk

For more information about our services please visit http://www.virtuosoconsultancy.co.uk/IT_Companies

To read more posts covering all aspects of sales, marketing and business development for MSP’s and VAR’s, please visit our blog: https://it-business-growth-strategies.blogspot.co.uk/

MSP/VAR Owners: Feeling Overwhelmed by your To-Do List?

Having been an owner of a VAR/MSP myself, I know all too well the constant demands and stresses that fall on the shoulders of IT company owners to constantly keep all the plates spinning. Whether it’s service delivery, customer issues, managing staff, technology that doesn’t quite “do what it says on the tin”, delivering complex IT projects, ensuring the sales pipeline is on-track, keeping up with ever-changing technology and evolving the business accordingly…. the “to do” list is endless for the owners of MSPs and VARs and can often seem overwhelming or even insurmountable.

It’s little wonder then that there is little, if any, consistent time to develop the business and many projects fall by the wayside, or spend months on the backburner, as there’s just not enough hours in the day or headspace to move them forward.

Trying to remedy the overload can be complicated …….. finding people with both commercial and technical skills, not to mention the organisational ability, to take on some of the owner’s “to do” list, is not easy. And even if you do find that rare skills mix, getting people up to speed with your business still needs significant amounts of time before you can start to divest some of your to-do list to them. Then there’s the financial investment in that individual, which will inevitably be significant, coupled with the question of whether you need that particular skillset on an ongoing basis, or whether it is just needed to cover a temporary peak in workload.

So wouldn’t it be great if there was a way time-poor IT company owners could push forward with all the projects and business development work that is on their “to do” list, and actually really move the business forward at a rate of knots? Well this is where Virtuoso Consultancy comes in.

We are a safe and experienced pair of hands into which you can place one or more of the items on your “to do” list – safe in the knowledge that within our organisation we have the commercial, technical and project management expertise to deliver that piece of work, on time and to brief, with only minimal input from you in the form of an initial briefing.

Here are some examples of projects MSP’s and VAR’s have outsourced to Virtuoso over the last 12 months:-

• Business Development and marketing campaigns – building and running from the ground floor up. Content writing – website content, blogs, sales pitches, proposal documents, tenders, service catalogues, case studies, marketing collateral, data sheets etc. 
• Development of lucrative relationships and co-selling campaigns with vendors. 
• Market research/due diligence on a new product, new target market, acquisition or new idea. Financial modelling around transitioning to a managed services or cloud provider model. 
• Efficiency and profitability studies. 
• Coaching and mentoring of sales teams to maximise performance. 
• Running that elusive in-house project that has never reached the top of the to-do list because there’s been so much chargeable customer work that has taken precedence. 
• Project Management of technically and politically complex customer projects at times there are not enough in-house resources available with the right skillsets. 

These are just some of the services Virtuoso Consultancy offer to time-poor MSPs and VARs, who need a resource who is immediately up to speed and will just get on with the job and get it done with minimal input needed.

My fellow directors and I have over 40 years combined experience in growing businesses and can deliver sales, technical, operational, business development and marketing experience that is IT sector specific, straight to your door. Whether you need us for a few days a week, a few days a month or for a one-off project, we can help take the strain and get your “to do” list back on track.

If this post has resonated with you and you would like to explore how we can help you get your to-do list back under control and achieve your growth aspirations, via our flexible business development consultancy approach, (supplying expertise required as and when it is required), then please do not hesitate to contact me on 07788 227654, or via email at janeg@virtuosoconsultancy.co.uk.

For more information about our services please visit http://www.virtuosoconsultancy.co.uk/IT_Companies

To read more posts covering all aspects of sales, marketing and business development for MSP’s and VAR’s, please visit our blog.

MSPs/VARs: Are you struggling to keep on top of all your client projects?

2019 is looking set to be a bumper year for projects for many of our MSP and VAR clients, with many factors, such as migration to cloud and Windows 7 going EOL, driving uptake in infrastructure upgrade projects.

And whilst it’s tempting to sit back and bask in the glory of sales success, there is now of course the small matter of delivering all those projects, as well as keeping the sales pipeline actively growing and running business as usual.

And this is where I regularly hear the following comments from rather harassed MSP and reseller owners:-

“We are being pulled from pillar to post trying to deliver all the projects, keep everyone happy and keep all the plates spinning”

“Our engineers are not as efficient or organised as they might be”

“We’ve got a major billing backlog that’s impacting on cashflow because no projects have been completed”

“Our team is becoming demotivated and breaking under the strain”

“Our sales team are struggling to close any more business because our onboarding lead times are so long”

Whilst these are problems of success, they are nevertheless problems, and need to be addressed swiftly if you are to avoid upsetting customers new and old alike, as well as putting business finances under strain and risking losing the key members of staff who were instrumental in your success in the first place.

That is why Virtuoso Consultancy now provides resellers and MSPs with expert project management services. We can step in at times of peak workload and manage technically, commercially and politically complex IT projects, to time and budget, on your behalf.

Being from a reseller background, with extensive experience in successful network infrastructure project delivery, we offer a safe pair of hands who understands the commercial, operational, political and technical complexities of delivering these projects, and as such we are up to speed almost immediately, minimising your time investment.

We are adept at dealing with and co-ordinating network engineers, in-house IT Managers, your customer’s senior leadership team, the sales and engineering departments at your organisation and numerous third parties to deliver IT projects successfully and on-time. We also offer the option to “white label” ourselves as a member of your team.

From relatively simple network upgrades for SMBs, to full infrastructure replacement projects at leading Independent Schools, to high-stakes office move projects for financial services firms, our team have extensive experience in planning, managing, mitigating risk and successfully delivering network projects on-time and on-budget.

For more information please contact janeg@virtuosoconsultancy.co.uk  or call on 07788 227654.

Project Management is just one of the tools on the “Swiss Army Knife” of services we offer to MSPs and VARs. To find out about our other services please see https://it-business-growth-strategies.blogspot.co.uk/2018/05/the-business-swiss-army-knife-for-msps.html

Storm Clouds Ahead for VARs and MSPs?

Those of you who read It’s The Cloud Stupid! an article penned last summer by my business partner Andrew Banning, will know that for some time now we have been predicting fundamental changes in the IT channel that have the potential to disrupt – and in some cases totally undermine – the business model of VARs and MSPs.

Well last week the first part of that prediction came true, when we saw the first move by one of the public cloud giants to start transacting their cloud services direct with SMBs.

Many of you will no doubt have read in the trade press that Microsoft announced changes to the Azure buying process, revealing that SMB customers will now transact directly with the vendor. In a post on its website, the vendor introduced the Microsoft Customer Agreement (MCA), which it said will become "the primary way for small and midsize customers to buy Azure services" from March this year - replacing the current agreements.

While, according to Microsoft, the new scheme will "provide a better buying experience with a fully digital agreement and the ability to customize for specific purchases," and partners will continue to support customers with presales and post-sales Azure services, it also stated that Microsoft representatives will be the "primary contact" for customers.

For any IT sales professional worth their salt, this latter statement should be ringing major alarm bells. After all, we spend our careers fostering close working relationships with our customers, building trust and ensuring that our MSP or VAR, and our company alone, is their trusted advisor when it comes to all things IT. Not having full ownership of the customer relationship immediately opens up the possibility for misunderstandings and undermining of trust.

And of course it’s not just about ownership of the customer relationship, it’s about what happens next. Those of us who have been working in the channel for decades have seen many vendors shift between direct sales and channel partner models many times. And of course a vendor is always going to do what they consider best for their own business. The fact that you have built your business model based around their channel programme is irrelevant to them, if their belief is now that they can be more successful by contracting directly with customers and bypassing the channel. So let’s just hypothetically consider what a vendor may consider to be their most successful business model in this modern era of IT infrastructure, where the vast majority of customers are now in the cloud. 

Perhaps as a public cloud vendor I would think that a channel model is potentially leaving my future success in the hands of third parties I do not know and now that we have a product that doesn’t need supporting in the way that traditional in-house hardware infrastructure did, I could bring this whole operation in house.

After all, I have the best marketing platforms available to me, (my own), a trusted brand to die for and no one understands my product like I do. So if cloud services are the way ahead and I already have a significant market share, why don’t I leverage my commercial advantages and be the first to offer an “Easy-IT” model to businesses and customers based on my own cloud offering? For sure there will be some investment involved, but what’s easier, trying to convince individual business owners with no loyalty to me to sell my products or to sell and support them myself? In terms of a long term growth model it really is a “No Brainer!”

And should Amazon, Microsoft, Google or one of the other public cloud providers make the decision to go direct to SMB customers with a fully managed and supported cloud offering, just who do you think has the deepest pockets in the dash for market share and in controlling customers requiring IT services?

But where does that leave the MSP/VAR?

 In my opinion the dash for customers is well and truly on. If there is customer demand for cloud based IT services, which there clearly is, those MSP’s without a cloud offering are on borrowed time; not only are they selling to a diminishing market, they are doing so with no current ability to expand and take cloud offerings to verticalised markets, in order to transition to the safer haven of being cloud services provider.

As for those MSP’s with cloud offerings, well it is a dash for market share and building loyalty with customers before the inevitable branded vendor models hit the marketing channels; the days of waiting for customers to contact us and having no effective new business development campaigns continually running are over, if MSP’s want to survive.

Luckily all is not lost, because help is available from Virtuoso Consultancy to the owners of MSP’s and VAR’s looking for the answers to the challenges that today’s market conditions present.

My fellow directors and I have over 40 years combined experience in growing businesses and can deliver sales, business development and marketing experience that is IT sector specific, straight to your door. We know how to build these models, they are “Current” and continually evolving, we know how to target and speak to the decision makers in your target markets and most importantly, we know how to grow your business and make you money!

If this has resonated with you and you would like to explore how we can help you achieve your growth aspirations, then please do not hesitate to contact Jane Gatfield on 07788 227654, or at janeg@virtuosoconsultancy.co.uk

To read more posts covering all aspects of sales, marketing and business development for MSP’s and VAR’s, please visit our blog; https://it-business-growth-strategies.blogspot.co.uk/