I have a client and good friend who asks me “hey Erick – guess what my clients are buying? They’re buying what I’m selling!” I used to laugh with him when he said this the first few times until I began to appreciate how true this is – not only for him, but for all of us.
I’m certain you’ll agree that our best prospects and clients generally buy the products and services we promote, recommend and include in our solution portfolios and service bundles. So, I have a simple question for you:
Does your solution portfolio meet the requirements of today’s businesses?
This question requires you to evaluate your current offerings, and determine if you need to modify, change or add to them. I ask you to consider this because I’ve noticed an interesting trend with partners who have engaged me to help them build and price their MSP and/or Cybersecurity Solution Stacks.
I’ve noticed that many partners look to add new products and services to their existing offerings without first evaluating the “legacy” services or solutions they are adding to, or building upon. One example of this behavior is keeping the same antivirus/antimalware solution that has been a staple of an MSP offering that was launched years ago, and simply including it in a new cybersecurity offering with a “checked that box” approach.
As we all know, cybercriminals are much more advanced, effective and determined today than they were just a few years ago, and what might have been acceptable security solutions then may not be up to the task of today’s cyber threats.
Are you selling what your prospects and clients want to buy today?
How often do you review your current offerings to make certain they not only meet the basic needs of your prospects and clients, but also adapt them along with your marketing and sales strategy to focus on what decision makers want to buy today?
According to a recent McKinsey Global Survey of Executives, COVID-19 has pushed companies much more rapidly towards digitization (by at least 5 years), and indicates that no longer will technology be a separate sector within businesses, but instead every company will be a tech company and view technology spend much more strategically than they had prior to the pandemic.
The survey goes on to state that the largest changes businesses were forced to make included areas such as Cloud migration, security and remote workforce enablement, and that these changes are also the most likely to stick in the long term. In fact, cloud migration and remote working have been more cost-effective than prior to the pandemic, with the latter being the most likely to remain the longer the crisis lasts, per 70% of respondents.
This creates a tremendous window of opportunity to re-think our marketing, sales and service portfolio design strategy, and focus more heavily on promoting, selling and delivering security, cloud migration and remote workforce enablement and support offerings, and win more Co-Managed IT business – because that’s what prospects and clients are buying today.
