Go for the Gold Like Michael Phelps: Use Sales Swim Lanes to Conquer MSP Chaos
What you’ll learn today:
Not all sales are equal!
Why just 1 Sales Process doesn’t work
Deliver superior service with Swim Lanes
A proven roadmap to Organizing the Sales Process
The real truth about reconfiguring Autotask
Swim Lane thresholds to consider
Are you leveraging this competitive advantage of Autotask?
If only Autotask made it easy to automate
Last but not least…Live Reports
No matter what your position in an MSP, you are in Sales. Trust me. Whether you are the “Sales Professional” pounding on doors, the Owner, or the Level 1 Tech recommending a Logitech webcam instead of that generic thing on Amazon, you are in Sales. So, listen up:
Not all Sales are equal!
I repeat: Not all Sales are equal!
Does Your MSP Have Just 1 Sales Process?
This may sound obvious to you, but the fact is that when Clients come to Advanced Global, they have only one Sales process. Time and time again, we find this is the root cause because no one - besides the Salesperson - has a clue What Was Sold.
Simply put, they are swimming in Chaos. And when every opportunity for most MSPs is like an Olympic sport with a big reward on the line, you want to be swimming like Michael Phelps: well-practiced and with a plan.
(🏅 Note: no endorsement of Advanced Global by famous swimmers or sports events is implied or ever going to happen…no matter how much we might hope).
Deliver Superior Service with Swim Lanes
Back to The Plan: Within a few short weeks of signing up as an Advanced Global Client, What Was Sold will make sense, and it is easy to pick up from the Closed Opportunity in the Autotask software and deliver Superior Service to the Client.
How is this possible? By dividing the Sales Chaos into 5 Swim Lanes:
Parts
Small Sales
Project Lite Sales
Project Sales
New Client Opportunities
Thinking that this doesn’t make any sense? After all, why do you need Sales Lanes when your MSP has a defined sales process that everyone knows: New Logos (Prospects) get wined, dined, qualified, and quoted; everything else is a ticket.
And that’s my point. Understandably, we all get excited about acquiring new Clients and putting their logos on our webpage because it’s a sign that the Company is growing.
But there is no need to qualify a Lead for a Network Upgrade, or other large projects. And no need to perform Network Assessments for a small sale. Besides, heaven help us if we need a Salesperson to tear themselves away from drooling over a New Client opportunity to order a cable, drive, or monitor for an existing one.
A Proven Roadmap to Organizing the Sales Process
In our heads, we know it does not make sense to use one process for all Sales, so why do we do it? Because we don’t take the time to set up and leverage Autotask to work for us and not against us. We need some direction.
I’m a bit old school, so I have no GPS coordinates, but I have a well-tested and validated roadmap showing the steps to organizing the Sales Process into 5 Swim Lanes. The process is as follows:
Stages
Sales Process Automation tool
Opportunity Categories
Speed Codes
Account UDFs
Create a Dashboard that monitors all Sales and high-level Service Delivery activities
WFRs & Communications
Live Reports
And in no time at all, a new Sales Opportunity - no matter how exciting, large, or minuscule it is - will flow easily from Lead to Happy Client. WOW, wouldn’t it be great if a few bullet points and Autotask configuration changes resolved all the issues with managing Sales?
The Real Truth About Reconfiguring Autotask
But the truth is, knowing what to do and reconfiguring Autotask is the easy part. Experience tells us it takes four times longer to retool our minds and change our habits.
Working thru the transformation with MSPs, the first step is changing the mindset, realizing that there are 5 different levels (Swim Lanes) of Opportunities. Once that concept is embraced, defining the thresholds of differences takes some time.
Swim Lane Thresholds to Consider
And even once they are established, expect a Salesperson or two to test the boundaries. For example, we had a rule that anything over 16 hours of estimated labor had to go through the Project Opportunity Swim Lane.
It was amazing how many proposals were drafted with 15.5 hours of estimated labor, yet the Sales Engineering review process had an Engineering Labor estimate of 34 hours!
Here are some Swim Lane Thresholds that might be considered:
Parts – less than XXX USD (150)
Small Sales – Less than 8 hours of estimated labor
Project Lite Sales – 8-16 hours of estimated labor
Project Sales – more than 16 hours of estimated labor
New Client Opportunities – new MSA
Note: we use hours in the thresholds because more of the Employees can relate to an hours criteria than the USD figure. These thresholds are derived from USD calculations on how much risk the MSP wants to take before more checks and balances are put in place to dog the sales process.
For example, 16 hours of labor equates to about 2,800 USD and is the level of labor liability where most MSPs want a full Sales Engineering review before agreeing to do the work.
Once the thresholds are thought through and documented, the next step is to develop a Sales Process for new Clients. This is the longest sales process and encompasses all other steps/stages in the Sales Process.
Once the longest sales process has been thought through, you can use Opportunity Categories to cut the list down for all other Swim Lanes and use a Speed Code for each Swim Lane to create Opportunities in a few keystrokes.
Drumroll, please…let’s talk competitive advantage
This brings us to the largest competitive advantage of leveraging the Autotask PSA software – dashboards. It is easy to configure a Sales Dashboard that not only provides a quick view of accounts and lost New Client opportunities but also monitors each stage of the Sales Process, no matter who owns the Opportunity Action item at the moment.
The biggest challenge here is to decide what is the trigger point for creating an Opportunity and how to track Sales Activities prior to creating the Opportunity.
Here is an example:
Top Row: Account Management – Current Client Widget, Survey Score Widget, Non-Conversion Network Assessment Widget
Next Row: Scheduled Calls To-dos, Network Assessments In Progress Tickets, Network Assessments Completed (without an opportunity) Tickets
Next Row: Opportunities in Ownership Stages - Sales, Sales Engineering, Procurement, Prospect/Client
Last Row: Sales Tracking in USDs – Next 30 days, all Ops, etc.
If only Autotask made it easy to automate…
Now the hard part. Autotask does not make it easy to automate the Sales process. First, there is a great divide between the financial side of the house and the Service Delivery side. For example, closing a Network Assessment ticket does not trigger an Opportunity Stage change.
There is a beautiful Sales Process Automation built into Autotask, but there is only one, and it is tied into the new Client Swim Lane. And my biggest pet peeve is that there is no incoming email processing for the CRM module.
That said, there is a way with a combination of Ticket and Opportunity Categories, Speed Codes, and WFRs to augment the manual Sales process with some automated mechanisms.
Last but not least, Live Reports
If you have been following Advanced Global for any length of time, due to our unique expertise (like being the best group of Live Report writers on the planet), there are Live Reports – the 2nd biggest competitive advantage to using the Autotask software.
For Sales, this comes down to accountability reporting. If the Opportunity has been in the Sales Engineering stage for more than 48 hours or the Request for Clarification stage for more than 24 hours, someone in management should know about it.
Personally, I find that working on Sales from an Excel spreadsheet is the easiest, but no one can see my activity. So, I use an Autotask Live report to update me on where all the Opportunities are from To-do through WON (we never lose, we just realize they are not ready to buy yet), work from the Live Report throughout the week, and update my notes at the end of each day (or at least that is what I am supposed to do).
Hopefully, this helped. We can help you build the most awesome Service Delivery experience with the Autotask software, but you can’t service what you haven’t sold. When you jump in the water you need to swim like you’re swimming for gold every time, because you are. You need to know which lane to swim in to avoid the sharks. You need to swim like Michael Phelps: with a plan.
If you need to talk Autotask Sales Pipeline Management, schedule a call with Steve.
The elephant in the room:
How do we know what we know? Because we are not philosophers! We are hands-on “How To” coaches that everyday guide MSPs on how to thrive by:
Fully leveraging the Autotask software
Providing the “Best in Class” Standard Operating Procedures
Leveraging Autotask Live Reports to hold everyone accountable
We are Thinkers and Doers with 49+ years of working for MSPs, bringing real Bottom-Line Improvements, change, profitability, and Best in Class performance.
Here are a few bullet points to let anyone interested know who we are and what we do:
We Are – the Autotask Global Service Delivery Authority
We Help – MSPs thrive
We Solve – Service Delivery issues, inefficiencies, and challenges by making sure that:
MSPs know what they don’t know
Techs know what to work on next
Someone is managing all open tickets and driving them to completion
The Client has a great client experience
Real-Time Time Entry is a cultural habit
Projects are completed On-Time and On-Budget
Profit is maximized
Autotask is being fully leveraged
The staffing levels are correct, and the workload is balanced
The historical data that is in the Autotask software is accessible to benchmark, track & USE effectively
The Service Delivery operations can scale
The Company can grow
Our Tools:
Autotask “Best in Class” standard build
Our MSP robust Service Delivery SOP library
Advanced Live Reports
Expertise in providing a transformational experience
Note: We are not philosophers; we are doers with 31+ years of Service Delivery experience, bringing real Service Delivery Improvement change, profitability, and Best in Class performance.
We start by offering a FREE No-Obligation PSA Configuration Evaluation.