Closing the deal and nurturing customer relationships
SkyKick ‘s mission is to help MSPs build successful Cloud Businesses, empowering them to better serve their end customers as they navigate their own journey to the Cloud. This often includes arming partners with Office 365 Cloud Backup services for their SMB clients. In the interest of helping our MSP community kick-start and expand their Cloud Backup business, we spoke with top-performing SkyKick Partners and asked for their top tips in bringing Cloud Backup to market.
In a previous post, we covered the first three stages of a typical customer journey — from building awareness for the solution, to segmenting target customers, to effective marketing planning and execution. In this post we’ll touch on a few best practices for overcoming customer objections and how to nurture customer relationship for the long term.
Manage objections and close the deal
The most persuasive arguments are customer stories about why Cloud Backup is like a lifeline. Whether it’s simple human error or malicious intent, data loss can paralyze an SMB. The cost and time to recover from a data loss can reek havoc on a business of any size, but especially true when it comes to SMBs . Cloud Backup serves as the de-facto insurance policy businesses need to keep information secure and accessible.
You’ll need to prepare for customer objections ahead of time, even though you’re offering said “de-facto insurance policy.” A few of the most common objections SkyKick Partners shared with us, and their responses, are below:
- When cost is a major sticking Point: Remind customers that a backup solution keeps the business running in the event of data loss, and that recovering from such a situation can be expensive – averaging $120,000 per incident for SMBs.
- When there is insistence on maintaining an on-premises backup: Is the customer aware that in the event of a fire or flood all their data can be wiped out simultaneously – because the original and backup data are stored together? Help them recognize the numerous security and cost disadvantages facing on-premises solutions.
An excellent resource for sharing ‘real-world’ examples with your customers is our website, which features partner stories showcasing how Cloud Backup has saved the day. For example, SkyKick partner BOAB IT had a law firm customer who was hit by ransomware a few years ago. The perpetrators demanded a ransom of $6,000 to restore the law firm’s data. Thankfully the firm was protected by SkyKick Cloud Backup, so all 44,000 encrypted files were restored and no data was lost – and the law firm did not have to give in and pay the ransom fee.
“Leveraging evidence like customer references — especially big-name entities — is pretty important for potential customers.”
— Alex, FMT
Nurture the relationship
Partners we spoke with, told us they use several methods to keep in contact with their customers and nurture the business relationship. While some of these tips may appear rudimentary, they lay the foundation for a great customer relationship and are crucial to both you and your customers’ success.
A natural first step we heard over and over again was to assign a dedicated account manager to every customer — or at least your most important customers. This level of customer service goes a long way, especially should problems arise with the account. A dedicated go-to person, who can quickly resolve customer concerns – or better yet proactively anticipate potential issues – drives customer engagement and business.
Another successful tactic we heard is to schedule monthly or quarterly business reviews with your key customers (or all customers, if you have the team to manage this lift). The purpose of these regular check-ins is to show your vested interest in your clients’ success and that you can help them scale as business needs change. Some MSPs fall victim to only contacting their customers when something goes wrong vs. on a regular cadence – and showing the customer what is working and going well.
On your call, be sure to include a detailed summary report of the data backed up on their system. SkyKick resources such the Daily Monitoring tool within the Billing & Insights Portal can be particularly useful for partners in this regard, giving them up to date information on the activity of each Cloud Backup subscription (eg. Data on number of items backed up, size and timestamp of each snapshot, etc). Other helpful information for partners to share with end customers includes best practices for using Cloud Backup to its full potential and testimonials from customers who are using Cloud Backup to address potential data loss risk (we have several on our website you can use).
These are just a few of the tips we collected from our leading Cloud Backup partners, gives us a shout with our best practices.