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Selling Cloud to Business Owners
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Presentation outline
» Paul Byrne
ChannelCloud UK/Ireland & On Line Computing/London Cloud
» Seth Oxhandler
CEO, CoolCat, Inc.
» Chris Martin
GFI MAX
» Scott Calonico
GFI MAX
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First, what do we mean by Cloud?
From the perspective of an MSP/VAR Cloud should mean:
Taking all the client’s technology from behind their firewall and presenting it
back to them via a hosted desktop to include:
» Secure environments
» Virtual servers (File, SQL etc.)
» Exchange email, email security,
email continuity, email archiving
» Blackberry & Active Sync
» Sharepoint
» MS applications – per user/month
» Hosting of LOB applications
» Hosted desktop accessible from
any device
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PBX
Off site backup & DR options
Managed Firewall
Managed AD
VLAN
Web Hosting
End user can self manage their own
environment
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Why Sell Cloud to business owners?
Gartner (Feb 2012):
“Cloud purchasers are looking for business outcomes not technology and
therefore is a different sell, the channel needs to adapt to this new way of
doing business and utilise services to differentiate in this highly competitive
fragmented market.”
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Why Sell Cloud to business owners?
thevarguy.com (Feb 2012):
“To deliver cloud services, you may need to make a few business changes.
This may be an entirely new business model for you. And, because the
decision to move to cloud computing is typically made at the executive level,
some of your sales teams may need to invest in executive-specific selling
skills.”
“The best way for VARs and solution providers to sell cloud services to SMB
customers is to discuss the technology’s business advantages as they relate
to customer needs and pain points throughout the sales cycle. Describe how
the technology can improve their business, drive down costs, and increase
productivity and network performance. It’s a value proposition sure to interest
them.”
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Why Sell Cloud to business owners ?
(On the basis that Cloud is appropriate, if not stay
on-premise, either way you secure the business)
» Blue Ocean opportunity – very few providers right now
» Sell business outcomes not technology - for the first time you can now
have a very high/positive impact on client's business's by leveraging Cloud
» Climb the food chain - from server guy to trusted business advisor
» Quicker decisions
» Business owners are interested in what impact a decision will have on their
business. They focus on increasing market share, increasing revenue,
controlling/decreasing expenses, bottom line not technology sprawl. They
are more direct and less patient.
» Higher recurring margins
» Fewer dips in revenue stream, more consistent profits, higher net margins
» Increase the value of your IT Services practise
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How to get to the business owner?
» To interact and sell to them, you must understand them and others in
the organisation
» Make your C level resource available for meetings
» Lower levels are interested in protecting their turf, keeping their jobs,
impressing others. These folks focus on features and functions. They
will eat up your time and ultimately cannot make the decision.
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How to sell to Business Owners
» Build trust/relationship with business owner - never easier for business
to acquire IT
» C level to C level and start thinking like a business person (be very
comfortable with P&L statements and Balance Sheets). They must
perceive you as having equal business stature (don’t be scared, they
are more like you than you realise). Most owners have done sales
before.
» Figure out what goals and pain points they have and help them solve
those problems
» You must be able to demonstrate how your solution helps them
resolve their pain points.
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What are some of the business outcomes/benefits of
Cloud for SMEs?
» Opportunity to remove any limitations/pain points of existing onpremise solution
» Eliminates business risk associated with owning IT
» Free existing internal resources from mundane day-day IT tasks
» Increase staff productivity with anytime access
» Financial control & flexibility
» Eliminates capital expenditure
» Ensures software licensing compliance
» Built in state of the art continuity and DR options
» Reduced admin overhead
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How to equate these outcomes/benefits to your
client’s bottom line.
(Factor in revenue, staff numbers and average salary)
Opportunity to remove any limitations/pain points of existing on-premise
solution
» Approximate what additional Revenues/GP can be had as a result
Eliminates business risk associated with owning IT
» Determine costs for any downtime in previous periods - factor loss of
revenue and non-productive staff costs
Free existing internal resources from mundane day-day IT tasks
» Allow for cost savings based on salary and no. of days recovered
Increase staff productivity with anytime access
» Allow a minimum of 1hr/week additional productivity for each member of
staff and factor in staff costs to achieve that on-premise
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How to equate these outcomes/benefits to your
client’s bottom line.
(Factor in revenue, staff numbers and average salary)
Financial control & flexibility
» Don’t pay for unused compute resources - agree a % of on-premise costs as
resource wastage
Eliminates capital expenditure
» Capex vs Opex - there's a value to holding onto your cash - mark-up up capex
cash retained to allow for interest gained
Ensures software licensing compliance
» Factor in time saved in not having the need to audit software licensing each year
Built in state of the art continuity and DR options
» High levels of Continuity and DR options are inherent in the Cloud - allow for
costs to do so on-premise.
Reduce admin overhead
» Allow for time consumed managing several vendors on premise
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Contact details
» Paul Byrne
paul.byrne@channelcloud.co.uk
» Seth Oxhandler
soxhandler@coolcatinc.com
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MSP Business Management
» Real-world tips and resources
» Videos, webinar recordings,
whitepapers, e-books, and more
» Blog articles discussing the
latest topics and techniques
Helping you to:
» Grow your IT support company
» Run your company more profitably
www.mspbusinessmanagement.com
» Deliver fast IT support and increase uptime
» Minimize threats to your business
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Q&A
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THANK YOU