Last week's MSPWorld conference had a lot of great discussions. A lot of the discussions were around topics I have heard before but I did learn something new and it was very surprising.
In previous conferences there has been a lot of consensus around sales tactics that work and those that do not. Specifically, regarding the issue of cold calling MSPs have been fairly consistent in terms of what they believe works for developing leads. For several years cold calling has been overwhelmingly decried as a waste of time.
However, MSPWorld MSPs last week (at least a handful) seemed to indicate that warm calling, when used in conjunction with other sales touch points can be effective in selling managed services. While nobody said cold calling was effective in closing deals, call campaigns that were realistic in terms of the objectives were used by several MSPs who claimed to have seen real success.
While there could be a number of reasons for this including a) increased awareness of MSPs and the services they provide, or, b) customers are more familiar with cloud and managed services than in years past. The ratio of success is around 2 leads per 400 calls made, which may be cost ineffective for some companies. Personally, I think MSPs who use call campaigns must do so as part of a larger marketing and sales strategy. On this point there was near universal acceptance by the MSPs.
