Using Risk Assessments in Sales
BY IT GLUE | July 19, 2019
Last week, we highlighted how risk assessments bring value to your quarterly business reviews, but that’s not the only good use for risk assessments. They can also be used to help with the sales process, and even with prospecting. Given that marketing and sales remain perpetual challenges for MSPs, anything that helps improve these processes is definitely worth exploring. So how do risk assessments help with your sales and marketing efforts? Let’s take a look.
A risk assessment is one of those critical pieces of documentation that can showcase the competitive value your MSP can provide to a client. By providing a sample risk assessment, a prospective client understands how thoroughly you will defend their environment – especially if you identify risks that they were not previously aware of. Quantifying those risks will reinforce this point further. The additional value of risk assessments in revenue generation is that they showcase your professionalism, and allow you to make specific, direct proposals to your prospects that address the issues that concern them. Here’s why this matters:
The MSP industry is becoming increasingly professional, and a couple emerging key trends matter here. First, more MSPs are concerned about price competition. That’s because MSPs are facing an increasingly competitive landscape when trying to close deals. With intensifying competition putting the squeeze on margins, and making it harder to close deals, MSPs need to be better equipped during the prospecting process.
The risk assessment can get you on the same page as your clients and facilitate early buy-in, even before they sign. This is a key component to having a smoother time migrating the new client’s stack. If you don’t get this buy-in, you’ll probably face a lot more pushback. This is the shared accountability model, and it allows you to put your new clients on the path to a standardized stack right away, for the benefit of everybody.
Remember that if you get your clients all on the same stack, your service costs will go down, and service standards will go up. If you’re using the best stack, then you can highlight the risks associated with the legacy tech the prospect is using.
Despite their value, risk assessments can’t achieve this alone, but they are a valuable tool you can use to support the arguments you’re making. To learn more about documenting risk in IT Glue, please check out the other posts in the risk management series, or sign up for a demo.
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