Focus on what’s important. That’s some sage advice that my great uncle used to tell me about growing a successful business.
That sounds good in conversation, but in practice what the heck does that mean?
When I was growing my MSP, this advice was extremely difficult to follow.
Everything at first glance looked important. When a client was upset about service or a new prospect knocked on our door asking about performing a project, both were important.
When a team member had to take an extended leave of absence? Important. New product offerings? Important. Pretty much everything that came across my desk seemed important enough to exert real energy toward.
What I’ve come to realize over the course of the years is that focusing on everything simply doesn’t work. And when I reflect over clients that were the most successful, they weren’t focused on the day-to-day IT problems. In our monthly meetings, they wouldn’t dwell on the number of closed tickets or positive scores. They were interested in seeing how our solutions were benefiting their business.
What I needed to explain is WHY the issues I was bringing up were important. And what I learned over the years is that if I presented them in a way where they weren’t suspecting I was selling them something—rather helping them solve their bigger problems—I’d gain their trust and get my agenda items approved.
This is especially important today when business leaders are on the fence to invest in cybersecurity. They see no return on their investment and often do not even understand why they’d ever want to invest in products.
Helping hundreds of MSPs communicate the value of their cyber stacks to clients, what we found is that having a third party run assessments dramatically increases their buy in to your solutions. They are able to better define the problem as something urgent and necessary, rather than something urgent to you as a salesperson.
My key takeaways from selling cybersecurity through third-party assessments are as follows:
- Don’t have your engineers wasting their time doing these assessments. When I was running my MSP, I would send a technician out on site to perform the evaluation. The results ended up mixed. At best, the prospect or client didn’t mind the tech. At worst, they changed their mind on working with us. Using a third party for your assessment increases your value. Instead of wasting their time with an assessment they likely believe is for you to make a sale, they see it as an opportunity to learn or gain insight in an area they lack expertise. It also saves you on average 6.2 hours per assessment performed. We have partners that are performing 4 assessments per week, can you imagine doing that yourself?
- Third-party assessments give you a way to educate your clients and prospects WITHOUT selling anything. You help the client understand that they are part of the solution.
- You can’t skip the assessment – always follow your process – which should include an assessment EVEN if you have a hot referral that you absolutely know will buy.
- Using third-party assessments allows you to educate the client rather than sounding like a used sales car salesperson. Why? You have extra credibility when the report is coming from someone that is neither the seller nor the buyer in the relationship.
- Your biggest opportunity to do this is RIGHT NOW. The buying cycle for security is NOT YET defined.
