I’m going to start with the elephant in the room… you’re going to hear MSPs say, “You don’t need a sales presentation! It’s just a distraction. Listen to the prospect and answer their challenges, and you’ll make the biggest impact.”
Don’t listen to this. You absolutely need to bring marketing collateral to your sales meetings.
In this blog, I’ll review exactly what I include in my sales presentations, and when and how to use the material.
Table of Contents
Let’s Start With The Intro Call
Before you meet in person and even have the chance for a sales presentation, there will be qualifying beforehand. Even if it’s a referral, you don’t want to waste time meeting with a prospect if they are not the right fit for you, just like they won’t want to meet you if you’re not the right fit for them. Save everyone time by properly qualifying.
- Do you have an MRR minimum? Make sure you’re honest about that from the start.
- Are they on Workspace/G-Suite and you only support M365? Make sure they’re aware that there will be a migration if they do choose you.
- Are they only looking for a break-fix without a monitoring or managed agreement? Keep them on your drip marketing and move on until they’re ready for a more serious partnership.
- Is your price range something they could manage?
Don’t hide your price or requirements. Many MSPs are not getting a ton of leads so they’re willing to chase prospects that are not ideal, but that will hurt you. Better to spend additional time on marketing to get more ideal prospects.
You want to take excellent notes on what their challenges are and ask open-ended questions to get as much information as possible. This is critical. Understanding their challenges and pain points will not only prepare your talking points but also your sales presentation folder as well.
Moving To The In-Person Meeting
Now that you have qualified the lead and have a list of their true challenges, not just what you want to sell, you’re ready to start preparing for the official sales presentation.
Add these items to a physical presentation folder:
Service Tiers
If you have service tiers, make sure to include them in the folder so they have a clear picture of the exact services you provide for each tier. If you have a customer service per client, then either leave this portion off or have a specifically tailored service sheet for this prospect.
Onboarding Timeline
If the prospect has unanswered questions, they will fill in their uncertainty with their own answers. Those answers almost always slow down the process. Having an onboarding timeline shows them exactly what to expect if they do decide to move forward with your MSP. This “fills in the gaps” and helps improve conversions.
Services Explained
You may not have this, but we created a short 4-page guide on our primary services explained in interesting and non-technical terms. We’ve received a lot of positive feedback on this, so I include it in every presentation folder.
Brochure (optional)
Some MSPs like to include a brochure in their sales presentation. I think it’s a good addition. I personally have not used one, but I do think it could help!
Content Examples
Here are some content examples that integrate well with a sales presentation, allowing you to rise above generic handouts.
- Case Study – Case Studies are very easy to create. Take a project that you’ve completed successfully for a client and lay it out in a Case Study format. We have a guide on creating a case study on our guide page. Make sure to check it out if you need help with this. It’s important to have a Case Study that aligns with the challenges your prospect is facing and shows how you were able to improve the operation of a local business with the same challenge. It should include a text testimonial from said client (more info in the guide).
- Other Services We Offer – Yes, our core service is Managed Services, but we also resell VoIP, offer structured cabling, security cameras, resell printer support, etc. Having a separate sales sheet that outlines each of these in nontechnical terms provides value in your presentation.
- Individual Service sales sheets – Now that you know what your prospect is struggling with, you can outline the specific service that you provide. Here are some examples:
- “We’re concerned about the security of our organization and are not sure what our current provider is doing for us.” – Print out your Executive Guide to Cybersecurity and include it in your presentation folder.
- “Our Microsoft 365 licenses are all over the place. We’re not sure what we’re paying for” –Include a one-pager that shows the key differences between the different M365 plans in an easy-to-understand manner.
- “We had an extended downtime and cannot be down” – Include your SDWAN service or more information on your internet failover options.
The important aspect is only including sales sheets that speak to specific challenges. For example, If the prospect didn’t bring up cloud services, there’s no need to distract from the immediate conversation.
During the Meeting
You’ve pre-qualified, you’ve prepared your presentation folder and talking points, and now you’re in the meeting. What next?
This is the hardest and easiest part all in one. You listen.
Pass out the presentation folder, but don’t even open it yet.
Begin having a conversation with your prospect. Ask more questions. Ask them about their business. Get to know the person you’re talking to and connect with them.
More listening and less talking.
If I talk more than the prospect, I almost never get the deal and I STILL do it sometimes.
In Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, he outlines the simple truth that the more you listen and truly care about what the person is talking about, the more that person will you. I always say that I’m not a good salesperson because I don’t know any of the sales tricks. I just like people, and I think it shows. Take that approach over false deadlines and tricks when you are giving a sales presentation: it has worked very well for me over the years.
Now that you’ve really listened to your prospect, you will instinctively know what needs to be said to keep the ball moving in the right direction.
Instead of talking about EVERYTHING in your sales presentation, bring out just 2-3 pieces that best speak to their challenges and review it with them. Just like a PowerPoint, you don’t want to read it to them! Just let it be your guide as you walk them through the value you can bring to their organization and the exact positive impact your suggestions will have on their business.
Wrapping Up the Meeting
You might be thinking that the presentation folder is content overload, or confused why you would bring so much collateral to the sales presentation but then only cover a few pieces?
The reality is you are making a bigger impression than the other MSPs just by having it, and you’re leaving behind a more informative look at your services. Prospects are very eager to do more research on the provider they want to choose. You’ve given them the resources they need to, “spend more time with you.”
Do not feel like you need to have a polished PowerPoint Presentation or that you have to cover everything in your sales presentation. Just know that you need to:
- Listen more than you talk.
- Use what you heard to put the most relevant information in front of them. For instance, if they didn’t mention cybersecurity once, don’t talk about it much. I know that sounds crazy because WE care so much about it. If the prospect doesn’t, just know that you can sell them on the other stuff they care about and still implement the same cybersecurity layers you need to!
- Leave behind the presentation folder. Even if they don’t go through it in detail, you’re now the MSP that has left the best impression behind. That attention to detail DOES HELP in these meetings. I have been in literally hundreds of prospect meetings and these little details have helped improve the conversion rate despite our prices continuing to rise.
- Solid Follow-Up. After the meeting, ask them what their next steps are or when they would like to begin onboarding if “they do choose your MSP.” This is a comfortable way to ask and is always received well rather than the hard sell stuff that does not work very well.
Bonus
There is a caveat to this. If you’re presenting to a large prospect 50+ seats. Oftentimes they will be expecting an actual presentation. If you do create a PowerPoint presentation, make sure to make it about the prospect and do your homework beforehand!
For instance, we recently won a $22k MRR project that required us to provide a presentation. Instead of being like every other MSP and just providing death by PowerPoint, we created a 6-minute video to make us stand out. They loved it! It may not be the only reason we won the deal, but it helped.
Here is the video if you want to take a look:
It doesn’t take much to do more than most!
I use the sales presentation template from the Tech Tribe, and it’s a great starting point. We are working on a different template that’s more concise, but this one has done well for us when we needed it.
Conclusion
Your MSP Sales Presentation is a powerful tool when meeting with prospects. It took us too long before we decided to finally start doing this. Our sales conversion significantly improved as soon as we incorporated it into our sales process. Don’t be the guy/gal that shows up with just a notebook…
If you would like to skip the line on creating your own content for this, check out MSP Camp. We have put every marketing campaign we run, the sales material we use, and guides on helping MSPs improve their marketing and sales on this membership site.
Check out the 7-day free trial and start using this content to grow your MSP!
