Five Steps To Building Client Relationships

Since launching his business in 2004, Doug Smith, president of Computer Troubleshooters NRD (Newton, Rockdale, Dekalb), has learned that managed services are essential to turning his break/fix IT business into a profitable venture. He also found that success is not just about landing clients, but keeping them. It is through a series of purposeful steps that he draws his SMB customers close and keeps them on his roster for the long term. Those efforts have enabled Smith to build his business, achieving 20% growth every year for the past three years.

Step 1: Persistence Pays Off

Smith’s company starts it sales process with lead generation. To keep a steady flow of potential customers in its pipeline, lead generation is tackled through daily calling hours. “We need to get an introduction, so part of the receptionist’s job is to call 15 companies every day, introduce us, and ask if we can send some information,” says Smith, who adds that tenacity is a must. “We go though those numbers over and over; typically, you have to touch them three times to get some action.” It was that kind of persistence that led Smith to one of his biggest customers, which resisted Smith’s advances for nearly two years. “They turned us down maybe 10 or 12 times over a 20-month period before we got through to them,” says Smith. “Now, four years later, we do $40,000 a year with them.”

Smith says from there, most customer relationships start with a simple IT product sale, what he calls his “foot in the door” offerings. “For example, we often ask a cold call if they are interested in saving more than $10,000 on their data and phone bill; that usually gets their attention,” says Smith, adding that because of a strong vendor partnership with ITC DeltaCom, $10,000 is the average savings over three years for a client that his company moves over to that vendor for phone and data service. “Being able to show the customer immediate savings gives you credibility and shows that you are looking out for their bottom line,” he adds. He says most products that work to turn a cold call into a sale answer basic IT pain points and provide immediate impact, such as bundled data/phone service or antivirus/antispam software. Smith also depends on vendors to provide leads to new clients. Both kinds of opportunities serve as a chance for Computer Troubleshooters to showcase how it handles IT work. “If I can get in the door and do anything for you, show you our quality and competency, then I feel we will keep your business,” says Smith.

Step 2: Offer Managed Services

For Smith, the ability to offer strong managed services has been the foundation for his company’s growth, but that offering comes at the end of a methodical process. “We build creditability first,” says Smith. “I am not going to try to sell a $10,000 solution to a client we just brought on board. I wait until they know I understand their business before I start recommending services.” That gives his company time to drill down and find out where the IT needs are within a new customer’s network and to build a working relationship with the customer and earn its trust. Smith trains his staff to have conversations with customers that reveal potential projects and any opportunity for recurring revenue solutions. For example, those conversations may include asking the decision maker at a new customer’s office about how much time the ad hoc IT person — perhaps the office manager — spends keeping the network up and running each week. “For the most part, those people are spending hours each week, and the boss doesn’t even know it,” says Smith. “Once we start talking about the cost of our services versus that person’s salary and lost work hours, a managed services sale gets much simpler.” Those exploratory conversations are a natural fit for technicians completing IT projects at the customer’s site, such as installing a new server or upgrading a security solution.

Step 3: Train Everyone To Sell IT Solutions

“Everyone who is touching the customer has to know how to see opportunities,” says Smith. “Everyone in our organization is focused on selling, focused on looking for the opportunity out there.” But, because he has found that technicians are often not extroverts, Smith trains them to be outgoing. In fact, from 8 to 9 a.m., three times a week, the entire company trains on making sales small talk. “We tackle topics bit by bit and continually improve on everyone’s sales skill sets,” explains Smith, who depends on role-playing to reduce anxiety that many employees have about talking with customers. By tackling face-to-face presentations with coworkers playing the customer’s role, Smith says he has tried to provide technicians with the tools to be successful in the customer environment. “We teach them how to be more extroverted: how to start the conversation, how to control the conversation, and when to stop talking.” While he doesn’t use any particular training tools, Smith does use some Microsoft curriculum, plus the experience of Jeff Weatherford, the company’s senior systems engineer, a former Microsoft trainer. “The bulk of what we do is simply share how we handle certain situations that come up during these interactions with customers,” says Smith.

Step 4: Offer IT Services That Connect Customers To Your Company

One opening that Smith trains his technicians to look for with new clients revolves around the VAR’s “sticky solutions” — those offerings that tie customers to the company. “Our ‘sticky’ products are those that function like a safety deposit box; you might consider moving your money from one bank to another but the idea of hassling with your safety deposit box will probably stop you,” says Smith. “If someone is just calling us for break/fix, there isn’t anything to keep them from calling someone else the next time. But if they have a hosted solution, or a website with us, they are not going to call someone else.” Smith says typically the products that work best for keeping clients in-house are remote off-site backup, phone and data contracts, websites, and hosted solutions. Often, these solutions are the bridge between the product Computer Troubleshooters used to get in the door and moving the client over to a managed services contract.

Step 5: Don’t Forget To Follow Up

Regardless of what compels a customer to stay, Smith says follow-up is key to keeping clients on the company’s roster. “You must talk to your customers often,” he stresses. Smith uses two communication automation tools, Xtreeme FollowUpExpert and Xtreeme MailXpert (which cost less than $300 total), to handle customer care. After a service call, the VAR reaches out to every client the following day via phone to answer any questions the client may have. Then, an automated email from Smith immediately follows that call, in which he reiterates that the client can call him direct at any time with questions or concerns. Two weeks later, another automated email is released from the company’s office manager, and lastly, four weeks after a service call, another automated email is delivered.

“Most of these are simply an opportunity to touch our client and to check on the status of their network, ask if there are any problems or any questions,” says Smith. He also uses the software to build customer relationships in another way; he sends out a weekly reminder of product features after a new product is installed. The trick is to provide added value to customers that can’t possibly remember all their new product’s features as covered in a training session.

Migrating customers from that first sale over to the ultimate goal — a managed services contract — has helped Computer Troubleshooters achieve 20% revenue growth in years past, and they expect to double that in 2009 (43%). The goal, says Smith, is to hit the $1 million revenue mark this year, fueled by managed services contracts. “Currently, about 60% of our monthly income [hardware sales excluded] comes from our service offerings,” says Smith. “We expect that by 2010, we will have enough services business to cover our entire operating budget each month. That is a game changer for us since it will free us up to adjust our model even more.”

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