Pages, Packages, Prices, Oh my...

[therealcrazy8]

During working on my website, I keep coming back to figuring out prices for services, packages, and what pages I want or don't want to display those things on. I have been looking over MANY PC Repair and MSP company websites just to get some ideas and I am not sure if it helped much.

Issue 1: For now I plan to service residential, SOHO, and SMB. So I am thinking about creating a "Business" page and a "Residential" page, of which both will list the services available for those categories. Because of this, it seems pointless to have a "Services" page. This might be the least of my issues though.

Issue 2: I plan on having 3 plans available for businesses. Being that as of tomorrow my business name will be Guardian Tech Solutions LLC. I plan to name my packages "Tech Guardian", "Tech Guardian+", and "Tech Guardian Complete". I don't know why, but I am struggling much harder than I thought I would with trying to structure which packages will have what services. I will be using MAX Remote Management for my managed services. Looking through it all here's what I have come up with for a list...

- Bitdefender A/V
- Web Protection
- Online Backup
- Mobile Device Management (maybe this should be an "add-on"?)
- Patch Management
- Reporting
- Remote Access

I think that's all, unless any of you fellow MAX Remote Management users know of other things I can list. The only exception MIGHT be the Remote Access since that may be more for me than for them. So knowing all of that, I am not sure how to divide these across the three packages or what other things to add. For instance, Years ago I used to work for a big IT company that had a help desk and remote, backup, and other services. They had packages too that included a certain amount of on-site time that didn't roll over from month to month and could be used for anything and once the time was up, and if they needed a tech to come on-site for something, they were charged $125/hr. I'm thinking it may be a good idea to include some on-site time in those packages, maybe 1,2, and 3 hours in the respective packages?

I have 1 or 2 other Issues, but those can wait. Does anyone have any suggestions or maybe even websites that have great examples of packages for something like this? Sorry for writing so much, It's late and I have been mulling this over and not making much progress. Any help would b greatly appreciated.

Last question(s), how many of you that service residential clients and have certain "packages" available for them? What types of services might those include? I'm thinking something like this might be a great idea as far as having a monthly income on those services.

 

[Slaters Kustum Machines]

Remote support benefits you and your clients equally. You can work on multiple things at a time and they can get faster support. Also. I would not list 3 packages. Clients will want the cheaper option because they want to save money and don't know what you're selling them anyway. Internally you can have 2-3 packages, but for the client just figure out what they need and give them one option. You know better than they do what they need.

 

[Mick]

Not sure about your neighbourhood, but round here you'd have a hugely tough time selling any type of 'monthly package' to residential clients. Basically, if it's working they won't call you; if it isn't, they want you to fix the one thing that (they think) is going wrong. They are simply not interested in paying you to tell them you've done an AV scan and didn't find anything or that you checked Windows updates and all is well etc.

 

[therealcrazy8]

Not sure about your neighbourhood, but round here you'd have a hugely tough time selling any type of 'monthly package' to residential clients. Basically, if it's working they won't call you; if it isn't, they want you to fix the one thing that (they think) is going wrong. They are simply not interested in paying you to tell them you've done an AV scan and didn't find anything or that you checked Windows updates and all is well etc.

That makes perfect sense, and that was basically my train of thought as well. However, I have seen people who offer packages to residential users, so this made me think that maybe they have had different experiences than what may be the "norm".

 

[Slaters Kustum Machines]

That makes perfect sense, and that was basically my train of thought as well. However, I have seen people who offer packages to residential users, so this made me think that maybe they have had different experiences than what may be the "norm".

Absolutely, we and several others here have quite successful residential recurring packages. I have posted ours here numerous times. It's not aimed at the cheap, low-end clients.

 

[therealcrazy8]

Absolutely, we and several others here have quite successful residential recurring packages. I have posted ours here numerous times. It's not aimed at the cheap, low-end clients.

One thing I learned at the Unconvention is "go for the clients you want" setting prices up higher would surely weed out the "cheap-o's". Thats a great idea. could you post a link to where you have listed your packages in here. Id be curious to look at them.

 

[Markverhyden]

One thing I learned at the Unconvention is "go for the clients you want" setting prices up higher would surely weed out the "cheap-o's". Thats a great idea. could you post a link to where you have listed your packages in here. Id be curious to look at them.

Yep. In spite of what many business people think you can never make it up in volume. And if you find yourself working 60+ hours week after week you need to raise your prices.

 

[Slaters Kustum Machines]

One thing I learned at the Unconvention is "go for the clients you want" setting prices up higher would surely weed out the "cheap-o's". Thats a great idea. could you post a link to where you have listed your packages in here. Id be curious to look at them.

Here is the most recent thread: https://www.technibble.com/forums/threads/home-user-msp-and-virus-free-guarantee.71160/#post-560631 We only have one residential package.

 

[Slaters Kustum Machines]

Yep. In spite of what many business people think you can never make it up in volume.

That's a hard lesson for some of us to learn, especially when getting started.

 

[fencepost]

I don't know why, but I am struggling much harder than I thought I would with trying to structure which packages will have what services. I will be using MAX Remote Management for my managed services. Looking through it all here's what I have come up with for a list...

- Bitdefender A/V
- Web Protection
- Online Backup
- Mobile Device Management (maybe this should be an "add-on"?)
- Patch Management
- Reporting
- Remote Access

I think that's all, unless any of you fellow MAX Remote Management users know of other things I can list. The only exception MIGHT be the Remote Access since that may be more for me than for them. So knowing all of that, I am not sure how to divide these across the three packages or what other things to add. [...] I'm thinking it may be a good idea to include some on-site time in those packages, maybe 1,2, and 3 hours in the respective packages?

I've been going through much the same, and I'll suggest the following:

EVERYTHING has automated patch management, Bitdefender and remote support (separate from remote access, see below). This is your minimal package of things that need to be on there. Anything non-automated that you do with these systems is billable, though you might include fixing issues with automated patch failures depending on the size of the customer and your pricing details - if they have 20+ systems, manual fixing for failed patches on one each month might be acceptable and may be a good negotiating point if needed to close a deal. My feeling is that this should be $15-25/month. If someone's too cheap for this I simply wouldn't consider them a potential customer for anything except break/fix and maybe not that.

The second tier is where you want most of your business clients. This should probably be $10-15/month higher than your bottom plan. At this level you add things businesses want but might not need, like Web Protection (block social media in the office, etc.) and Reporting (inventory, events, blocked sites perhaps, etc.). This is also a good spot to include "incidents" - anything you need to do manually, probably remotely. Might be one per system per month, might be one per two systems per month, might be one per four systems, but you can of course negotiate to include more in a contract, etc. Incidents might be password resets, print queue problems, hung apps, all sorts of things like that. It may also make sense to cap the time on these, perhaps at 20 minutes or so (most will be much less). It's worth calculating out: if every "included" incident gets used in a month, and they average 15 minutes each, are you going to be unhappy and losing money? If so, perhaps include fewer or raise your price.

Finally for a top tier, it might be worth considering it a "critical system" level and possibly sell it as such. What you include in this and how much you charge is up in the air - maybe you include image-based backup, maybe you include more incidents, maybe incidents on "critical" systems include on-site as well as remote, maybe you throw in remote access for the client (if Maxfocus allows that). You might only have a few systems in an office with this level - perhaps a checkin/checkout system, perhaps the system of the person who does payroll, it's hard to say. If these systems are down it puts a major crimp in routine business or has major impacts (missed payroll?) so these are the systems your customers NEED to have up and running - no "I'll bring it back on Thursday" for these.

Beyond those, backup should probably be separate and separately priced, because most PCs shouldn't need it - or if they're prone to storing things on the desktop and there's no server with shared data files being backed up, maybe include a limited amount on each PC. There are also a lot of options for backup that make it not fit so well into just one of three plans - image or file? Maximum size? Revisions? Maximum age?

I think Mobile devices should probably also be separate, with a lower price. You won't have nearly the things you're monitoring or doing on those, and there probably won't be a 1-1 match of PCs to mobile devices.

Finally, remote access might actually be a service you can sell depending on how Maxfocus handles that - can you create an account for an end-user and give them remote access to their PC? That could be an extra-cost option with a small setup charge and $2-10/month charge, or you could include it as a "freebie" in the top-tier plan.

 

[EveVirtual]

Not sure about your neighbourhood, but round here you'd have a hugely tough time selling any type of 'monthly package' to residential clients. Basically, if it's working they won't call you; if it isn't, they want you to fix the one thing that (they think) is going wrong. They are simply not interested in paying you to tell them you've done an AV scan and didn't find anything or that you checked Windows updates and all is well etc.

I had this issue at the beginning as well and then I started offering it as a bundle with a diagnostic or virus removal. Maybe offer a free 14-day trial or something. It's true, it's hard to justify a 7.95-15 plan on a $300 laptop, but if you target the right clients, you can get them on a 1500 computer.

Really just depends on the target demo in your area.

 

[Choppie]

Not sure about your neighbourhood, but round here you'd have a hugely tough time selling any type of 'monthly package' to residential clients. Basically, if it's working they won't call you; if it isn't, they want you to fix the one thing that (they think) is going wrong. They are simply not interested in paying you to tell them you've done an AV scan and didn't find anything or that you checked Windows updates and all is well etc.

I'm lucky to be in a good area, but there are times when I get that call, and when the price auctioning starts, I get them off the phone fast, OR tell them, "I'm good at what I do, if you want to hire me, its 1 dollar, 75 cents per min starting from when I answered your call 5 min ago, think about it and call me back if you want my expert experience to get you up and running fast." The rest of my regular clients get lots of breaks but they always recommend me to their friends--its a nice trade off.