Last updated: December 1, 2021
Customer acquisition in IT is a tedious and nerve-racking business. Every potential customer already has an IT partner. Moreover, the willingness to change this partner is usually very low. For this reason, cold acquisition is usually hopeless. Even with warm acquisition, the decisive arguments are often missing, which one can do better than the current IT service provider, and therefore most companies shy away from the change.
The missing incentive to work with your company is usually due to the lack of a sales story. Why should a company leave its existing IT partner and enter a new relationship with your company? What do you do better than the competition? To be able to answer these questions convincingly is essential for the acquisition of new customers. However, in most cases this is not possible or only poorly done because there is simply no knowledge of the potential customer’s IT. What should one do better if one does not know how it is currently done?!
To make matters worse, due to the large number of IT service providers on the market, there is also strong time pressure to acquire new customers.
Failure leads to frustration
The consequences are failure and resulting frustration. A lot of time and resources have been invested in the acquisition of a potential customer, but could not convince him to cooperate because of the above mentioned points. Due to a lack of IT know-how of the prospective customer, there are also no points of contact, so that the contact is terminated. This procedure is frustrating, not only for the sales representative. The lack of profitability is also something that no managing director likes to see. Especially the cold acquisition is very expensive and unprofitable due to the extremely low realization rate.
Convince with a sales story
So what is necessary to be interesting for a potential customer? And even more than that, what does it take to convince him of a future cooperation?
In short, a powerful sales story is needed!
A “We’ve been doing this for many years and can do it better than your current IT service provider” is no longer enough these days. You need to be able to present a resilient story about what you can do better than your current partner. You must present conclusive concepts of what you would change. Of course, it is best if you can already point out weaknesses in your current IT to the prospective customer and offer direct solutions. That impresses and convinces.
To do this, you need extensive knowledge of the prospective customer’s IT environment. Only with a comprehensive overview you are able to make direct suggestions for improvement.
The problem is that you have very little time for this analysis. In addition, from a resource and financial point of view, it is not possible to “allocate” highly specialized IT professionals for each customer acquisition. For this reason, a standardized and automated methodology is needed to perform such analyses quickly and cost-effectively.
IT documentation as entry point
But it is not only you who lacks an overview of the potential customer’s IT. In most cases, the prospective customer himself does not have an up-to-date and complete overview.
Use this fact as door opener! Almost no company has up-to-date IT documentation, although everyone is aware of the necessity. Lack of resources is the number one reason for this omission. So offer the potential customer to create an up-to-date and complete documentation for a small contribution towards expenses. Hardly any company will refuse this and this way you will get a foot in the door.
Advantages for the customer
IT documentation is mandatory for every company. Almost every audit and also many legal requirements demand up-to-date documentation of the IT environment. In addition, it is also indispensable for uncovering weaknesses and security gaps. And last but not least, a future-proof IT strategy and design is only possible on the basis of reliable, up-to-date data.
This is a classic win-win situation. The new customer receives a complete documentation of his IT environment with only minimal monetary and personnel input.
Advantages for the IT service provider
You, in turn, not only build a relationship with your new customer, but also gain valuable insights into the customer’s IT by creating IT documentation. In this way, you can point out weaknesses and suggest solutions directly. This enables you to generate immediate follow-up business, such as the sale of hardware and software, cloud solutions and services.
Now you are probably asking yourself, and rightly so, how you are supposed to create such comprehensive IT documentation for the new customer, and how you are supposed to do so without a lot of effort and expert knowledge in order to be able to offer a favorable price.
It is right to create a complete documentation of the customer’s IT by hand, is extremely time-consuming and therefore not economically feasible. For this reason, the initial inventory and documentation must be completed quickly and with as little manual effort as possible. This can only be achieved through the highest possible degree of automation.
Automated IT documentation with Docusnap
The Docusnap software is the easiest way to record the ACTUAL state of the customer’s network. Docusnap inventories and documents IT infrastructures fully automatically. Using ready-made standard evaluations, you can quickly and easily make concrete statements about the recorded IT networks.
The automation makes it possible to create IT documentation with minimal personnel effort. Use this advantage and offer the creation and updating of IT documentation as a long-term service, for example as a flat rate. For a fixed amount, the customer then receives regular monthly, quarterly or half-yearly updates. In this way, you can retain the customer in the long term and always keep an eye on changes in the network.
And best of all, as an IT service provider you do not incur any additional license costs for Docusnap during the customer acquisition phase. In this way you can convince potential new customers of your services without risk with the help of Docusnap.
Your sales story
And this is what your powerful sales story looks like:
Offer the potential new customer an entry package. You create a complete IT documentation for him, analyze his IT network and point out any weaknesses or potential for improvement. Thanks to Docusnap, you can do this very quickly and offer it at a favorable overall price.
The chances of success are very high, because neither the potential customer nor his current IT service provider is able to manually create IT documentation at the price you offer. This is your access to a new customer.
Afterwards you can either directly realize the identified improvement potentials or you offer a regular update of the IT documentation and thus stay in close contact with the new customer.
The IT service provider market is highly competitive. Use the advantages of automated IT documentation and expand your customer base!