(How to) win business customers and recurring revenue

[Big Jim]

We operate a B&M shop in a smallish town (population circa 10,000) that serves 99% break-fix residential.
We do have a handful of business clients that use us exclusively but none of these are tied in to any contracts and can change service provider on a whim if they so wish.

I want to make a significant shift to both business customers and recurring revenue.

How do you go about presenting yourself to new business clients to win their business, is it as simple as cold-calling them or physically calling in to the business or are there more successful methods ?

As for the recurring revenue side of things, how have you successfully sold you MSP to clients ?
Bearing in mind that I haven't created my MSPs yet or in fact decided on a client that I can use to monitor customers PCs.

Web site is currently undergoing a redesign (with an external party) and I have at the moment instructed them to create separate areas for business / residential, I want the residential site to look more friendly, and the business side to look more professional.

 

[seedubya]

The sales and marketing stuff I'm not good at i.e. getting in front of prospects. The only thing that I've done that's worked for me is going door to door with brochures accompanied by bags of sweeties for the receptionists as a bribe to get the info in front of the right person. Usually you can get a bit of banter going and, the next time you call back, in 6 months or whatever, they'll remember you. This delivers a trickle of clients over time. I've had one or two leads from my website. Mostly though, they're referrals from existing clients.

Recurring Revenue
- helpdesk
- remote service
- monitoring
- AV and security
- managed firewall \ UTM
- managed backup \ DR
- VoIP
- Office 365
- other cloud services
- managed WiFi
just about to add fully managed networks with Datto switches, APs and routers
investigating the addition of training services, particularly security related.

Using Pulseway for RMM and PSA - integrates with Quickbooks desktop.

 

[Markverhyden]

@seedubya is completely correct on the marketing aspect. For this type service business customers are looking for personal interactions. Recommendations, face to face, etc. Web hits have a very low yield for this segment.

On this side of the pond we have a government sponsored organization. The SBA. I'm sure the UK has the same. Take advantage of their experience.

And as I've said many times. People don't plan to fail, they fail to plan. Take an hour or two and make a business plan. @Your PCMD has put together a great template. Don't need to do the whole thing. Just what is relevant.