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The Worst Time to Sell Managed Services (And How to Fix It)
Break-fix calls can be goldmines for MSP growth—if you handle them right. The mistake most providers make? They solve the immediate problem, then try to upsell managed services when the client feels relieved and satisfied. That's like asking someone to order their next meal right after they've finished a T-bone steak. This episode reveals a simple process tweak that creates natural leverage for managed services conversations: how to bundle an assessment or diagnostic discussion into every break-fix visit, so you can uncover latent pain points and present real findings instead of relying on the client to see the value on their own.
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Welcome to Repeatable Revenue, hosted by strategic growth advisor , Ray J. Green.
About Ray:
→ Former Managing Director of National Small & Midsize Business at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where he doubled revenue per sale in fundraising, led the first increase in SMB membership, co-built a national Mid-Market sales channel, and more.
→ Former CEO operator for several investor groups where he led turnarounds of recently acquired small businesses.
→ Current founder of MSP Sales Partners, where we currently help IT companies scale sales: www.MSPSalesPartners.com
→ Current Sales & Sales Management Expert in Residence at the world’s largest IT business mastermind.
→ Current Managing Partner of Repeatable Revenue Ventures, where we scale B2B companies we have equity in: www.RayJGreen.com
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Transcript
Speaker 1
An MSP seller that I was recently working with. Asked me, how do you get more deals to convert that come in as not managed services contracts? And so and this is really relevant for any company that's selling something that has like a project based component to it and then
::Speaker 1
recurring services based component to it. And you know, and in it, the issue is, you know, people come in and they they're doing what's called break fix.
::Speaker 1
I just, you know, ad hoc, one off type of type of IT services. And they just want, you know, somebody that they can call reactively when something breaks and say, hey, this broke, you know, can you, can you come fix it
::Speaker 1
as the service provider, you don't want that one from a business model standpoint, but also for this from a service delivery standpoint.
::Speaker 1
it's much easier to maintain your clients when you're able to be proactive when you understand their entire environment, when you can help them, you know, make better strategic decisions and, you know, have a better infrastructure.
::Speaker 1
the issue from a sales process standpoint is people oftentimes call you who are doing the break fix model, and they want you to fix their thing.
::Speaker 1
You want to sell them the managed services thing. It it creates this this tension or this conflict in the process. And one way of addressing this is people go and they just solve the problem and they say, hey, your servers fix your computers, fixture whatever is fixed.
::Speaker 1
you should be good to go now, you're so impressed with us that what we want to do is now introduce our other services to you.
::Speaker 1
But here's the challenge. Here's the problem with that.
::Speaker 1
You were trying to sell somebody at the absolute most hardest, most difficult time to sell somebody. So imagine you go to a restaurant and you sit down and you order your your appetizers, you order your entrees, you order a big, you know, big T-Bone steak, whatever it is.
::Speaker 1
And then after it's all said and done and you feel great, you feel relieved. You're like you're not hungry anymore. You're full now. The waiter comes in and says, hey, do you want to preorder your next?
::Speaker 1
Your next thing? Right? Like, do your next visit. You know, that's like the hardest time to sell somebody. I feel relief, I feel satisfaction, I feel everything that doesn't drive a sales process forward.
::Speaker 1
Right? When you think about a sales process, your people are usually in some type of pain. They have a problem, they have a symptom they want, like a you know, an issue to go away when they're feeling great, tough to sell them something. So the key to addressing this, like the way to do this is
::Speaker 1
in my view, you don't completely ignore these break fix opportunities like it's I don't think the answer is you just say, hey, we don't do break fix root because break fix opportunities.
::Speaker 1
Present a an opportunity for you to have a discussion and, move them into the buying pocket for managed services. They may not understand the value of it. They may need more education. They may not understand like a whole litany of things. And you solving their problem is
::Speaker 1
an opportunity to start that discussion. So I really don't recommend saying we don't do it.
::Speaker 1
We're out like we're only and we're only going to talk to people who are ready to buy or have intent for managed services. I think you limit your market pretty significantly.
::Speaker 1
What I do recommend, though, is you create the process, recognizing that you're, you're you're going to be selling them at the most difficult time after you think they have that sense of relief of the problem going away, like so, you create the process and you design it accordingly, meaning you say, cool, let's do this.
::Speaker 1
We can come out, we can get that fixed. You have an engineer come out with you, you know, we'll we got there today. We're gonna there tomorrow like whatever it is. Right.
::Speaker 1
we'll go ahead and do that now as part of doing that what we're going to do is, is run a quick assessment on on the network.
::Speaker 1
And what we're really looking for here. Prospect is like what's what's the root cause. Like what's what's actually driving this forward. And see if we can help you prevent this in the future. And we can do that assessment while we're, while we're fixing the problem. And then, you know, we can show you what the where those what the results were and get what it is.
::Speaker 1
Or you can say, you know, hey, yes, absolutely. Or we're going to go out there, we're going to fix this.
::Speaker 1
As part of doing that, what we'd love to do is a sit down and, and talk to you for, for a little bit of time and understand what's going on that's causing this. Because typically when this server thing happens, there's something else that's, that's causing that, that it may be some lifetime of devices, it may be a network issue, may be a security issue.
::Speaker 1
I mean, you may have ransomware or something like that. And so what I'm doing, however you designed that thing, what I'm doing is saying, I am going to help you fix the immediate problem. Yes. And I'm going to do that. And as part of doing that,
::Speaker 1
what we would like to do is either have a conversation or, you know, do an assessment or something similar
::Speaker 1
that enables us as the service provider to at least initiate the process for managed services sales and create some leverage after the fact.
::Speaker 1
Now, if you run this process properly, what happens frequently is you get out there, you fix the problem, you've run an assessment, or you've had that diagnostic discussion through that diagnostic discussion or the assessment, you identify other problems, other pain points, things that they may be aware of, latent pains and problems that are like, you know, that exist out there that they're unaware of.
::Speaker 1
And as they feel the relief and the satisfaction of you causing that problem and you've, you know, established some some trust and, you know, a little bit of credibility in what you do. You can present that finding, right? You can present the opportunity that then creates the next opportunity.
::Speaker 1
what you don't want to do is just solve the problem and then assume that solving the problem in and of itself is going to create the opportunity for more stuff.
::Speaker 1
Because I, as a buyer, you know, say, say man of services or five grand a month for my company, if I just paid you five grand to come out and fix this problem and it went away, and you're trying to sell me on five grand a month, in my mind, I'm thinking, well, why would I do that? Like, it's is cheaper.
::Speaker 1
Do it my way. I'll just call you every six months and fix the problem. Right. Because I don't understand the value. I don't understand what it is. I don't understand, like all of that stuff. So I'm relying on my own education understanding. And it's just a it's a tough process for you to run that way. So that's my recommendation.
::Speaker 1
And whether you're selling it or selling anything else, just remember that from a buying standpoint, the most difficult time to sell somebody is when they feel relief and satisfaction. So seed the the opportunity to create some leverage or identify some latent pain or some, you know, something that they're unaware of so that as they feel the relief it satisfaction, you can actually have a conversation around why that particular issue happened or something like that.
::Speaker 1
But
::Speaker 1
Oh, if that helps. I guess.
