Help Required

[brightsolutionstechnology]

Hi,

We are offering IT managed services to small-medium sized companies. The company is run by two highly certified IT engineers who hold degrees and experience in two major blue chip companies.

As we begin to prepare for the start up of the company, we need some guidance about what strategy and methods (e.g. cold calling) to use in order to atleast get an appointment with a potential Client? We are particularly thinking about law firms.

Many thanks in advance.

 

[ethical PR]

Go back to your business plan and marketing strategy....when you did your research to establish there was a marketplace for your service...how did you see yourself differentiating your company from your competitors? Who within the legal sector are your buyers/decision makers? what do you know about the communications routes you are best using to engage with your target audience? What budget have you set aside to invest in your marketing activity?

Identify your marketing objectives and use the answers to the above questions to help populate your marketing plan and put together an action plan to implement your marketing and PR activity.

 

[Karllacey]

Hi,

Firstly (and my apologies in advance), I am going to go opposite to the poster above. Sorry about this "EthicalPR", but this is a marketeers strategy and as cold calling was mentioned in the post - this is my area of expertise.

Whilst "EthicalPR" is right from one point of view, this can take some time to move on and developing marketing strategies without any what I would consider to be 'real action' you could tie yourself up in knots.

Rather than focus on one industry with your product, soft market test it by cold calling. Try 20 companies in each different field based on geography (lawyers, insurance brokers, accountants etc etc) and look at the results in each particular field.

If/when you find once type of industry which you are getting greater success in than others, go deeper and explore 100 pieces of data - measure it and make a decision then.

If you need help with strategy and implementation, please feel free to drop me a message.

Good luck!

 

[ethical PR]

Karl - I don't disagree at all that the OP should test the market, and certainly don't mind others having a different opinion than mine...that's why this is called a forum .

The OP will/should already have a marketing strategy in place as part of their business plan......or else how would they know they have a viable business model?

What I was suggesting they did was to take the information from their marketing plan to understand the best communications channels to use to reach their target audience and build this activity into a plan.

Cold calling is just one of many communications you can use to reach a market and may or may not be the right one for this type of business.

That's why I would always suggest an understanding of your target audience and the communications channels they use is vital to ensure you are investing in marketing/PR activity that gives you the best chance of marketing/promoting/building relationships with target customers.

 

[SkoshBusiness]

Both EthicalPR and Karllacey have made good points. From my experience of working in IT I would suggest that focussing on the legal sector will be challenging at best and you should widen your potential customer base.

Test different industries, find out their challenges and see if it is something you can help with. Make some calls with smaller companies (those that you don't mind losing as a customer) to test the water, perfect your script and then when you feel comfortable go after the bigger customers.

 

[Karllacey]

Or, to throw Skoshbusiness' comments upside down which believe it or not has worked for me.

Go for the massive companies, so crazily massive and go for the littliest tiniest piece of cheese from them. In my experience these corporate companies screw you down on price which almost makes it feel like you are paying them.

Why?

Because as soon as you produce an invoice, you can put their brand on your website and you will find from there accessing the SMEs will be easier and it is where you will make most of your money. Simply brand confidence.

Equally so, if you try and enter the SME market without the corporate back up, you will find that it will be tough because you have no real credibility behind you.

I have always thought that the best way to do is shoot the head and the rest of the body will fall.....

 

[Jetbusters]

what IT qualifications do you hold?

Are you PC/Server support specialists or more focussed on network support?

 

[SkoshBusiness]

Karllacey - I agree that you should go for a big win but what I was suggesting was to practice the pitch on smaller companies for a day or so to see what objections they throw at you and then you can pre-prepare answers to these questions when they asked by the big boys.

You will also feel more comfortable at this stage as you will be armed with responses to the difficult questions.

Give it a go brightssolutionstechnology and let us know how you get on.

 

[Karllacey]

Oh no, I think you misunderstand me there!

I am same going for a 'small piece' from the big boys. If your looking at large chunks they are going to screw you down on price time after time. Sure they are profitable but in my experience I have found that by accessing the big boys carrying out small projects for them, getting their logo on your site gives you creditability when accessing the SMEs.

The knock on effect is that the SMEs tend to take you a lot more seriously and this is where I have made the core of my business.

With regards to getting the proposition right, all start ups are learning on the job whether your going to see SMEs or Corporates - you are going to be hit by swerveball questions all the time - at the end of the day they are still people