Doing What You Sell: Aligning Sales and Operations for Your MSP
For any Managed Services Provider (MSP), trust is the foundation of long-term client relationships. From the moment your sales team engages a prospect, to the seamless delivery of services by operations, maintaining that trust is essential. However, many MSPs stumble along the way, especially when there’s a misalignment between sales and operations or when the services sold don’t match what’s delivered.
How can an MSP build trust that begins in the sales process and carries through operational execution? The answer lies in aligning sales and operations around standardized solutions that allow for customization without becoming bespoke, ensuring clear communication and consistent delivery.
Get those ducks lined up
Establishing What You Sell: A Critical Review of Contracts and Offerings
The first step toward building a trusted relationship with clients is ensuring that your contracts accurately reflect what you offer. This may seem simple, but many MSPs fail at this crucial step. It’s not uncommon for an MSP to fall into the trap of “gold plating” or over-promising. They either throw in extra services to make a sale or allow bespoke agreements that significantly complicate the fulfillment process.
Before you can align sales and operations, review your current contracts:
Do your contracts clearly define what you are selling? Are your services well-defined with standardized language that avoids ambiguity?
Are you consistently sticking to the contract? Many MSPs unintentionally do more than promised, eroding profitability and muddying the waters when it comes to client expectations.
How is billing handled in your contracts? Make sure that what’s sold is easily translatable into an invoice. If your contracts and billing don’t align, it creates confusion and mistrust. Ensure that legacy contracts are reviewed and, when necessary, converted into updated service agreements that match your current offerings.
By ensuring your contracts are clear, comprehensive, and reflective of what you truly offer, you begin establishing a foundation of trust.
Aligning Sales and Operations: Custom, Not Bespoke Solutions
One of the challenges MSPs face is balancing the desire for customization with the need for scalability. Clients want solutions that meet their unique needs, but bespoke contracts can cripple an MSP’s ability to scale and deliver services efficiently.
Instead, focus on offering customized, not bespoke, solutions. This means giving clients flexibility within a standardized framework. How do you do this without creating one-off solutions that can’t be operationalized?
Create a flexible service catalog: Develop a core set of services that can be customized slightly for each client but stick to your standard offerings. For example, allow clients to choose different support levels (basic, premium) but don’t create entirely new support structures for each contract.
Clear value propositions in contracts: Focus on three core areas where you can differentiate yourself in the market. These should tie back to operational strengths that you can consistently deliver on. It could be the frequency of Strategic Business Reviews (SBRs), an iron-clad SLA on ticket resolution, or proactive AV patching.
Align billing to the contract: Whether you bill by the user, site, or machines, automate the process so that it’s simple, transparent, and easy to scale. This could mean integrating with O365, AD, or your RMM to ensure that client invoices reflect the services provided, without manual intervention each month.
By keeping your services standardized yet customizable within that framework, you build trust with clients. They know they are receiving a tailored solution that won’t break the system or leave them waiting for long, complex implementations.
Setting Quality Controls in Operations
Trust is solidified when what’s promised is delivered. After determining what services you’re selling and ensuring they’re clearly communicated in the contracts, it’s crucial to establish quality controls within operations to make sure those promises are kept.
Set Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that both sales and operations understand and support:
SLA on tickets: Ensure that your team meets or exceeds the promised response and resolution times.
SBR frequency and quality: Regular business reviews should not only be scheduled but deliver actionable insights for the client.
AV patching and warranty renewals: Proactive management is key to client satisfaction. Tracking and reporting on these items build trust over time.
Phone stats: Is your team available and responsive? Metrics on response times and call resolution should be part of the KPIs.
These KPIs ensure that your team is delivering services with a high degree of consistency and quality, reinforcing the trust established during the sales process.
Aligning Sales Collateral and Processes
Consistency between what’s sold and what’s delivered is crucial for maintaining trust. One way to achieve this is by ensuring your sales collateral is in sync with your operational capabilities.
Sales teams need standardized tools to communicate service options to clients. Create simple but effective collateral that clearly outlines what problems your services solve, without getting into the weeds of bespoke solutions.
Client Success Managers (CSMs) should participate in sales meetings. CSMs bring operational knowledge to the table and can identify any potential issues with fulfilling client requests. Sales meetings should either include CSMs or be recorded for them to review.
Educate the sales team: Sales reps should be empowered to offer customizations within your standardized service catalog, but they need to understand the operational impact of those customizations. Make sure they know what flexibility exists and where the line is drawn.
When sales and operations are on the same page, the client experiences consistency from proposal to delivery, further solidifying their trust in your team.
Making Billing Simple and Transparent
Billing is one of the most significant touchpoints for trust. If your invoices don’t match your contracts or there are hidden fees, client trust quickly erodes. Align your billing processes with your services:
Automate as much as possible: Use your PSA to integrate with systems like O365, Active Directory, or your RMM tools to automate the number of users, devices, or sites being billed.
Keep it transparent: Ensure clients can easily understand the invoice and how it lines up with the services provided. Transparency in billing builds trust over time.
Conclusion: Building a Culture of Trust
Building trust doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It requires a consistent, coordinated effort across sales and operations, from the first sales call to ongoing service delivery. By establishing clear contracts, offering standardized but customizable solutions, setting operational KPIs, and aligning your processes, you can create a culture of trust that clients will value. When your MSP operates with transparency and consistency, you not only differentiate yourself in the market—you build the kind of relationships that lead to long-term success.
Ask yourself: Are we truly doing what we promised? Or are we unknowingly breaking trust along the way? The answer lies in aligning your teams and processes around the principles of trust, clarity, and operational excellence.
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