4 min
When I ask any Managed Service Provider (MSP) or IT Solution Provider what their goals are for the next twelve months, they inevitably tell me “growth.”
For most MSPs, growth means finding new revenue through marketing to and acquiring new clients.
Of course, finding new clients for your business is important. However, in my experience, the majority of MSPs are overlooking a huge growth opportunity that is right under their noses.
I’m talking about your existing clients!
Growth Through Upserving Existing Clients
In my experience, a wealth of MSP revenue opportunities can be found within your current client base.
Offering upserving opportunities to existing clients is a *whole lot easier* than trying to find new clients! Your existing clients know, like, and trust you – so selling new services and solutions to them should be easier than selling to new clients.
Plus, when you increase revenue by offering services and solutions to existing clients, you inevitably also lower your support cost and, therefore, increase your profits.
If this sounds like a win-win, it is!
So, how can you begin to look for overlooked revenue opportunities for your MPS within your existing client base?
It all begins with a simple chart.
Creating an Upserving Matrix
When I ran my own MSP business, the team and I created a big chart that was pinned to the main office while.
This chart (which we loftily called our “Services and Solutions Matrix”) was very simple.
- On the chart, we had two axes’.
- On the left-hand axis, we listed all of our existing clients by name.
- Then, on the top axis, we listed all the services and solutions that we offered to every client.
Finally, in each of the chart boxes, we put a tick if the client took the service/solution from us and left it blank if we’d not yet upserved them.
(By the way, if you’re wondering why I refer to Upserve rather than Upsell, my good friend and author Bob Burg has written an excellent article on The benefits of learning how to Up-Serve your clients).
Of course, with modern technology, you can easily recreate this type of chart in Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets that can be shared amongst your colleagues.
However, provided you don’t have hundreds of clients, I’d encourage you to go old-school with this!
Having this chart visible in your office is a powerful reminder to everyone of the opportunities that are awaiting you within each client site!
Marketing to Existing Clients
Once you’ve created your own services and solutions matrix, you should have a much better idea of the opportunities that await you.
For instance, if a few of your clients take your Network Monitoring solution, then you’ve got an obvious and immediate opportunity to upserve them!
Armed with this information, I’d suggest you speak to your existing clients who do take this service from you.
Ask them why they took this service and what value they get from it.
Voila! You’ve immediately created a library of testimonials from existing clients, which you can now use to provide social proof to your other clients who haven’t yet taken this service.
Next, create a simple marketing campaign that explains the benefits of your service (in this case, network monitoring) and build some of your existing client testimonials into this marketing.
Your marketing could be a simple flyer, an email campaign, or even a reminder for you to speak to each of your clients in person and explain the benefits of using your additional service or solution.
The bottom line is you want those clients who aren’t currently taking this service to agree to come on board. Remember, doing so will not only reduce your cost of support but increase your MSP revenue and profits, too!
Marketing to New Clients
Of course, once you’ve upserved all of your existing clients with your service/solution, then thanks to the work you did create a mini marketing campaign, you’re now ready to speak to new clients!
Again, the point of the above exercise is to upserve *existing clients*.
However, your hard work in creating a mini marketing campaign around your existing service or solution can then be tweaked and re-used to market to offer a point solution to a whole new raft of clients.
In my experience, while selling Managed Services to new clients can sometimes take a long time, selling a new client a single-point solution is a lot faster.
And once you’ve got your foot in the door with a point solution, then you can start to build trust and rapport with the new client, opening the opportunity to speak to them about a Managed Service contract.
Conclusion
The majority of IT Solution Providers and Managed Service Providers want to grow their business.
However, growth doesn’t necessarily mean having to find new clients!
By offering your existing services and solutions to all of your existing clients, you will be uncovering a wealth of untapped MSP revenue opportunities.
Plus, for every new service or solution you offer to an existing client, you can expect your cost of support to go down and your MSP revenue and profitability to go up.
So, what are you waiting for? Grab a sheet of paper, create your own Services and Solutions Matrix, and get out there and upserve those existing clients.
Further readings: