Professional Services - MSP

As a dedicated hunting team, SALT understands the complexity and lengthy sales cycles involved in Managed Services Contracts. MSPs typically grow by word-of-mouth, referral and owner network. The MSP sale is always a relationship based sale where TRUST is the pinnacle of getting a deal closed. So how do you build trust from a cold introduction? SALT has a proven process that involves exchanging information of value over time.

When it comes to sales and business growth, most MSPs are living in a transactional world. They are looking for the prospect who has a flooded server room, network on fire, or ransomware taking over the office. These scenarios do come up, but they are extremely rare. Rather than hunt for emergencies, SALT is positive that the best way to sustainably grow an MSP is to build relationships and trust with qualified targets.

We work with clients with Operational Maturity who understand this challenge and have the ability to close and support the deals we bring in.

“SALT has been essential to our Sales and Marketing Team due to their understanding of our industry, their willingness to learn and adapt to our specific messaging and a disciplined and professional approach to finding clients for us that meet our profile. Our partnership with them has produced a 10x return over the past year and the pipeline looks solid going forward. Because I know SALT has their end managed well, I am free to direct my attention elsewhere. We would not hesitate to recommend SALT."

- Partner - Regional IT Managed Services Firm

“We had a great meeting this morning. We're planning on a follow up in about a week after he meets with his team regarding our services. Good job, keep em coming.”

- President - East Coast MSP

“You guys are great! I hope to utilize your services with another venture I am starting this year.”

- Owner - Midwest MSP

Client Capabilities

• IT Managed Services
• Co-Managed Services
• Managed Security
• Cloud and Backup
• Hardware as a Service
• IT Strategy and Planning
• User Support / Helpdesk
• Network Security and Management
• Compliance, Policies and Practices
• Firewall Management, Pen-Testing
• EDR, MDR, Threat Hunting, Incident Response

Frequently Asked Questions

Do you call on the IT contact within the target account?

We find the best relationships are built with owners and principal members of the organization. IT people are frequently threatened by MSP services, so we avoid them whenever possible.

Isn’t your success just a result of volume? MSPs sales is a numbers game.

We disagree. Many MSPs are stuck in “transactional sales” mode - where aggressive and silver tongue sales is the approach. How’s that working out for you? You’re burning the target list. The fact is, TRUST is absolutely required to win the MSP sale. A “relational sale” takes time. Many MSPs are conditioned from years of word-of-mouth and referrals - with trust pre-baked into every sale. If you want to scale beyond word-of-mouth and referrals, you need to begin building relationships with pre-qualified accounts. They will have a problem at some point, and you need to be top-of-mind when that time comes.

How do you deal with overlapping regions?

SALT is exclusive to MSPs in each region. We will only engage with one client per geographic area which is typically 1-2 hour drive from your headquarter location. We find most MSPs don’t work outside this range. If you want multiple metro areas, we can help via a larger contract (or begin with one, and expand into others).

We don’t have a target list. Can SALT help us to identify ideal customers to call on?

Yes, SALT subscribes to industry leading data sources and has an internal database of 6 million contacts. We build our target lists based on industry, geography, size, and other factors determined in onboarding.

Who owns the contacts and the data as a result of the engagement?

As the client, you hire SALT for time, talent and process. We work on your behalf using your brand name to gain entry to new customers. While we track and have access to the data through the engagement, you own everything we gather on your behalf.

We have an existing internal sales team, can SALT still help us?

As we dig deeper into internal sales teams we often find they are fairly technical staff - sometimes former engineers. These teams frequently work within the existing book of business and lack the personality and process for prospecting. SALT would argue that we have the time and process to serve as the dedicated hunting team. You benefit from the specialization of tasks by keeping your technical sales staff focused on higher value activities.

Examples of Success

• Opportunities Identified
• Typical Process
• Success Story

Client Discovery

SALT hold a series of on-boarding calls to become a seamless extension of your team—to accurately represent your business.

List Building

Qualified, dedicated humans at SALT use their expertise and knowledge of world class tools to create a custom prospect list.

Account Qualification

Leads are qualified based on how good of a match they are for you.

Contact Verification

SALT finds the right people—the decision makers. We obtain contacts, email addresses, and phone numbers.

Nurturing Relationship

We nurture the contacts, building trust using your brand over time. Regardless of interest, we nurture relationships within qualified accounts.

Opportunity Identification

Hand-off takes the form of a call, face-to-face meeting or webinar. During this, we set up the QFTA - Qualified First Time Appointment.

SALT works with Managed Service Providers (MSPs) in various regions across the United States and Canada. Once we engage an MSP with a service contract in one region, we do not work with any of their competitors for sales services. In one market, SALT engaged a 15 person MSP to target local professional-services businesses. SALT worked with the client to build a list of lawyers, CPAs, financial consultants, and marketing firms within the agreed upon geography. Roughly 500 target accounts were loaded into the SALT CRM, and we began prospecting. SALT first worked to qualify the target accounts and organize them into “A”, “B”, or “C” accounts based on how well the business fit the MSP client’s services.

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