By Bob Vogel, B2 Marketing
“Your best clients are someone else’s best prospects.”
That was one of the first notes that I jotted down while watching a recent webinar featuring noted IT Sales guru Gil Cargill.
Scary as it sounds, it only stands to reason that if you have any competitors in the market place, they are going to be looking for opportunities to steal your best clients – the larger ones that outsource some or all of their IT needs, pay their bills on time, and appreciate the value of outside experts.
Gil calls this “healthy paranoia” because it should prevent you from taking your existing clients for granted, and maybe spur you into developing a proactive process to both retain and even grow those accounts.
Another note I jotted down from the webinar was this one:
“Don’t rely on lagging indicators to evaluate the real opportunities with your existing clients.”
By “lagging indicators” Gil was talking about historical information as opposed to future potential. Just because an existing client is small today, doesn’t mean that you aren’t leaving money on the table. That client could be spending part of its IT budget elsewhere that you could capture. Or, they might be ripe for services you can deliver but the client is unaware of them. Or, they might be ready to expand.
Without a regular assessment of their technology infrastructure and real technology needs, your clients will stagnate.
One last note I will share from this webinar is also a bit unsettling:
“The better a job you do as an MSP, the less the client will be aware of the service you are delivering, and the lower a value they will place on the fee they pay.”
It is true that proactively addressing IT issues before they create visible problems for the client is the holy grail of managed service delivery. But if you can’t generate compelling reports that document this value, and present these reports regularly, and in person to your clients, you might find it hard to renew your contracts . . . to say nothing of growing them.
I only shared a few of my notes in this short article, but Gil offered a ton of this kind of advice in his 30-minute webinar sponsored by RapidFire Tools. If you are interested in strategies for retaining and growing your existing clients, here’s the link to watch an on-demand recording of the webinar: http://ww2.rapidfiretools.com/lp/growing_your_customers.html.
