Cloud Services for MSP’s will help you profit from selling cloud service. With our Cloud solution, your clients will benefit from automation, security, and network management that you provide. We also help you get the job done easier and faster and focus on what matters most – meeting your SLAs and creating a profitable business.
As a trusted IT Partner you already have an advantage and opportunity to sell cloud services. You create customized services that align with your customer’s requirements without including solutions they don’t need. You know your customers, and they trust you.
Plus, because you deliver in-person services, they’ll trust you to migrate a set of applications to the Cloud or integrate IT services like disaster recovery and backups. They’ll trust you to educate them about the benefits (or potential drawbacks) of moving specific applications to the Cloud. You have an advantage that cloud providers don’t.
How Can You Sell The Cloud To Your Clients?
With most business executives looking to the cloud, there’s a great opportunity for you to take advantage of this. You can generate more revenue from higher-margin services by selling cloud services. It can also lead to profitable long-term business relationships.
However, some IT solution providers find it difficult to convince their clients to move to the Cloud. But selling managed cloud services isn’t difficult if you focus on the overall benefits.
When promoting the benefits of the Cloud to your clients, consider these three points:
- Sell to the right customers.
- Sell to the right needs.
- Sell the value of the Cloud.
Below, we go over these points in depth to help you gain a better understanding of some excellent ways to sell cloud services.
- Sell To The Right Customer
Customers who are proactive-minded present a strong selling opportunity. If your customer already sees the value of managed IT services, they’ll be more willing to migrate their IT infrastructure to the Cloud. And, if they’re looking to grow their business, you can show them how using the Cloud will provide the flexibility and scalability to do this.
These customers know that preventative IT maintenance is core to their business – that by investing in technology they can improve productivity and reduce the chance of system downtime. As a result, they should be willing to sign a fixed-fee contract to ensure their needs are taken care of on an ongoing basis. Try selling cloud services to them first.
What about reactive-minded customers?
These people only want you around when they have a technical issue. They don’t want managed IT services. Try offering a menu of individual services to get them onboard. Sell them via an à la carte service model. This service offering will make it easier for them to buy from you. However, your overall goal should be to convince them that they need proactive services, and cloud solutions are a part of this.
- Sell To The Right Needs
When trying to convince or persuade someone, you know that timing is essential. If you try to force cloud services on your customers without providing a compelling need to do so, you’ll fail. Focus on their overall business goals and how cloud services will support them. Also, focus on the value of the service rather than the specific technology benefits.
Compelling needs might include the following:
- OPEX Instead Of CAPEX
Promote the urgent need to replace failing and aging hardware without spending a lot of money. If your customer doesn’t want to make a massive capital investment, cloud service will be an attractive option. Use this to your advantage to drive business to the Cloud. It’s an opportunity to present a proposal for a virtual, cloud-based environment, so they won’t have to spend their capital. Plus, explain to them that they can write the service off as an operating expense (OPEX) rather than a capital expense (CAPEX). The OPEX model may be more appealing to them.
- Freeing Up In-House IT Resources
Businesses need to free their in-house IT teams from the burden of low-value tasks like troubleshooting workstations. They need for them to focus on other responsibilities to promote the growth of their business. Moving on-site hardware to the Cloud lets you manage their IT environment for reliability and security. Take advantage of customers who have this mindset.
- Enhancing Flexibility & Scalability
Explain to your customers that to grow their business, they need a flexible and scalable approach to technology. The Cloud provides this with Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) options.
SaaS provides on-demand access to a number of applications over the cloud, including email, security, collaboration, and customer relationship management. Your customers can have access to the applications they already know and use without the need to install or maintain software.
IaaS also provides scalability and flexibility. Your customers can scale up or down quickly in response to their growth, or when they need to reduce their own services. Plus IaaS offers powerful storage, servers, and networking solutions to accommodate their needs.
- Business Continuity
When your customers’ network and critical solutions go down, so does their productivity and profitability. However, many small and medium-sized businesses still don’t have the backup and disaster recovery solutions they need. Explain to them how a managed cloud solution uses virtual servers to provide the redundancy and built-in fail-over systems they require. This ensures they can quickly recover when their IT infrastructure goes down. It offers an appealing reason to migrate to the Cloud.
Sell The Value Of The Cloud
Business owners or managers who already see the value of information technology should recognize the value of the Cloud. Focus on the value you can provide to those customers who already trust you. Stress the value that cloud service offers by explaining the high level of security, availability, and flexibility they require.
For customers with a reactive IT mindset, take them through this slowly. You must first convince them of the value of managed services. Get to know what they need, and once they’re convinced that managed services provide value, it will be much easier to upgrade them to more comprehensive cloud-based offerings.
Each of your customers has unique needs you must address. However, they can all benefit from how the Cloud can:
- Prevent the need for capital investments in hardware and software.
- Avoid IT maintenance.
- Help them benefit from flexibility and scalability.
- Shift pricing from a per-device model to a less costly user-based fee structure.
- Provide a guaranteed level of service.
- Offer secure access from any device and any location to boost productivity and collaboration.
When you provide your customers with all the reasons they should migrate to the Cloud, and follow the suggestions we offered here, most of them should agree that using cloud services is a good solution for them.