Hey guys, Sam here reaching out to the sw community for help/advice yet again.
About two months ago, I started the motions of starting my own MSP/consulting business. I’ve come a long way since then and am at a point now where I can start bringing in and supporting clients. My company has an identity, email is up, and my website is solid. So as of yesterday I’m officially open for business. My problem is I’m an IT guy, not a sales guy. I have absolutely ZERO sales experience or training and have no idea whatsoever how to go about prospecting let alone the actual sales process. Yesterday was day 1 and I spent the day mainly doing cold calls to some local businesses in my area that I thought would be possible contenders. Unsurprisingly I had no luck whatsoever. All the info I have looked at doesn’t really back up cold calls as an effective sales tactic, and I feel like I’ll be wasting my time if keep doing them. I will be exploring a few marketing strategies like facebook and networking events and such, but I still can’t help but feel like I don’t really know what I’m doing (on the sales side of things) and am just wasting valuable time and energy. I’m hoping some of you guys can include me or advise me on effective prospecting and sales strategies that work in this type of business.
TLDR: I started an MSP business but have no idea whatsoever how to go about prospecting, sales and getting clients. Looking for advice.
5 Spice ups
Congratulations. Don’t give up on cold calling and other prospecting tools. I suggest making a quick read of “Predictable Revenue” as a way of thinking about marketing, sales, and sales account management.
Networking will help; I might focus on LinkedIn over Facebook for more B2B action.
2 Spice ups
How many cold calls did you do yesterday? On the phone or in person?
1 Spice up
Thanks Allen! I will take a look at that book and will be creating my linkedin profiles tonight.
Sid, I did a total of 8 cold calls yesterday over the phone. I wanted to see if anyone would at least be willing to meet with me. No luck at all.
I know 8 doesn’t seem like a lot but it was day 1, I was really just getting a feel for how these things went and I also did a lot of reading and research in between calls.
2 Spice ups
Get some business cards and start knocking on doors, even if they won’t talk to you, leave a card. Almost everybody has a tech they work with. It takes some sort of stimulus to cause them to look elsewhere. That could be a lot of things. But, if they have your card, there’s a chance they may call you when/if that happens. What size of business are you targeting?
1 Spice up
I have business cards. What I’ll do is I will finish the week doing cold calls then Monday I’ll go outbound with some business cards in hand.
Any more tips/suggestions gents? I could really use some insight on how to conduct a proper meeting and close a deal once I have a prospect that actually wants to meet.
