I’ve given up counting the number of managed services providers (MSPs) websites where I have looked at the “Home” and “About” pages and still wondered just what the company does. Bland statements that cover the same sort of things that every other MSP offers; claims of being ethical, sustainable, the best employer – you name it, everything but what a prospect may be searching for. And even when something borders what the company does, it tends to miss the point.
Have a clear and succinct value proposition
I often find MSPs discussing areas such as ‘as-a-service’, including infrastructure, platform, and even software-as-a-service, these are not actually what an MSP is selling. While these are components of their services, what MSPs are truly selling is the solution to the specific problems their customers face. This includes their expertise, services, resources, and ongoing support.
MSPs must clearly articulate the problems they are solving for businesses. It’s no longer just about delivering technology but about providing comprehensive solutions that enable businesses to operate efficiently, securely, and with scalable support. By focusing on the outcomes of their services—rather than just the products or technologies—MSPs can demonstrate the true value they bring to their clients.
Put yourself in the buyer’s shoes
Most prospects and customers are not technologically specialized. They are focused on their business, attracting prospects, and supporting their customers. Very similar to what you, as an MSP, are focused on.
Rather than persuading prospects that what you do is the most resource-efficient, sustainable, or up-to-date; try putting yourself in the buyer’s shoes.
Your prospects want to run their business efficiently. They are looking for your services to deliver their business operations so they can focus on growing the business. Focusing on the business outcomes will result in more hits to your website.
Leverage AI to cut through the complexity
Even more complex is when the MSP offers a range of services. Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly improving how to address this, with natural language processing (NLP) and generative AI (genAI) increasingly helping prospects identify their needs and providing a playbook for how the MSP can meet those needs.
Here, a free-text input box asks the prospect to describe their problem. NLP first analyzes their input. AI matches the MSP’s services and creates a composite service that meets the prospect’s needs. GenAI creates a report for the prospect, detailing the proposed solution in business terms, along with the costs and contractual terms.
If the prospect is happy with the proposal, a simple button allows them to complete the backend work and provision the solution to meet their stated business needs. With that, the prospect has now become a customer. There has been no discussion about virtual CPUs, gigabytes of storage, GPUs for AI, or any of that technical jargon that is meaningless to the customer.
This also applies to MSPs who are focused on the technical aspects of IT, such as developers and others in the field. The prospect’s desires are to start code development as quickly as possible. They will have little interest on how these developers are accessing the platform to code in. Most of them just want an environment where they can quickly start their tools and begin their “Hello World” coding. Offer them the quickest way to start development, in seconds/minutes, not hours or days and show them how the development platform feeds into the business environment. You can mention DevOps if you’d like, but there’s no need to delve deeply into it.
Remember the business you are in
The key to success is to focus on what your prospects are trying to achieve in business terms. Focus on the business outcomes they will gain by subscribing to your services. The technology isn’t important. It is up to you to set everything up correctly and to provide high availability while delivering a secure and sustainable environment. Ultimately, you must remember the actual business you are in and focus on generating a profit.
The old adage of employing the KISS principle (keep it simple, stupid) is where you should be. Intelligent and effective marketing is based on solving a prospect’s direct problems – not on baffling them with technological terminology.
Photo: chaylek / Shutterstock
