Promoting Your VAR Company
Management of revenue growth and targeting of the highest margin prospects - in initial sales and throughout ongoing client relationships - become the challenges for VAR executives in light of this backdrop of exploding growth opportunities. Software programs that automate professional services offer VARs a leg up in the market, allowing them to capitalize on growth prospects rather than stifle them.
Benefits to VARs Utilizing Professional Services Automation Platforms
1. Strategic Perspectives
The majority of value-added reseller (VAR) companies begin by offering a core suite of products and services. Their expansion into new product and service lines, followed by creative packaging to suit customer preferences, is a natural consequence of their meteoric rise to the top. The majority of value-added resellers view their company through the "business practice" lenses, which include the marketing and delivery domains that integrate the various disciplines required to provide a client solution. Virtual assistant resellers (VARs) require practice-oriented, professional services automation software tools for managing and reporting items in the same way that clients purchase them.
A case study illustrating how PSA software may enhance top-level understanding
Take a network practice that incorporates hardware components like servers, routers, and hubs, software components like security messaging and e-mail, client education, and network monitoring and administration as an example.
A CEO's point of view compiles all the practices and ranks them according to revenue, growth rates, and margins, which are critical performance metrics. By monitoring the progress of their projects and using drill downs, practice managers may determine what is and isn't working. Importantly, VARs may feel the company's pulse and identify growing or shrinking markets with the help of PSA software.
2. Making Your Clients Visible: Every client is vital, but some will have a greater impact on your bottom line than others. You may improve your contacts with clients after you know their lifetime worth, which includes revenue, projects, bills, and opportunities, with the help of a PSA software.
Try to put yourself in the client's shoes.
Customers perceive their connection with the VAR as encompassing all contacts, including sales, receivables, service incidents, and more.
It is often a time-consuming, one-time spreadsheet exercise for a VAR to collect such details for even a single client. Plus, once it's finished, the remainder of the company seldom gets to benefit from the findings. This means that executive remedial calls and incremental sales opportunities, two examples of the kind of follow-up activity you would want to see more often, don't materialize.
Everything changes when you use professional services automation software. It provides executives with a quick snapshot of the most important aspects of each client's activities, including practice revenues and margins, purchasing patterns, service problems, and invoice payment. As a result, you can learn more about the client's perspective on the VAR and the value they offer.
With this information in hand, you can set in motion an opportune phone call from a high-ranking executive who will then call to reaffirm your stance and perhaps initiate further conversation. Using this data, you can establish priorities and focus on your most valuable customers while also developing your relationships with those that show the most promise.
#Monitor continuing contacts to boost income
The amount of interactions between the firms, recurring order patterns, and increasing order size are some of the metrics that executives use to measure the strength of a customer relationship. The inverse is also true: an excessive amount of support center calls over the same annoying issue or an excessive number of unproductive in-person visits that fail to generate sales. You can use PSA software to detect changes in purchasing habits as a warning system, allowing you to keep a good client from slipping away and identify areas where fresh techniques can reawaken purchasing.
Clients are more likely to trust you when you're easy to see.
Your capacity to earn your clients' trust and generate value for their businesses is your ultimate deliverable. Clients and you both benefit from time and money savings when you open up and let them observe your daily interactions.
Customers can check the status of their payments, see which invoices are still outstanding, see which orders are still pending (and if there is any delivery information available), see the number of service calls that have been placed recently, and see which ones are still open by using the PSA software portal.
You initiate a project to plan, execute, and get the system up and running after receiving an order. Customers can access project status updates, generate internal reports, and stay in the loop all through the project with the help of the PSA software portal.
Thinking forward Proficient services automation software is being used by VARs to track the acceptance process and guarantee that projects achieve their ROI or business improvement goals. As this is happening, a smart practice manager will be on the lookout for aftermarket service sales opportunities.
3. Marketing Efficiency: By tracking your real marketing expenses and results, you can boost your conversion rates and cut down on unnecessary expenditure.
Half of all advertising expenditure goes down the drain; the catch is, we have no idea which half. Expenditures on VAR marketing are also subject to that principle, unfortunately. Collecting accurate costs for all parts of lead generation and comparing them to sales accomplished is made possible with professional services automation software. It's potent data that guarantees successful proposals are reused and unsuccessful ones are discarded. Marketing operations can get closer to their goal of increasing revenue and seizing high-margin opportunities when they know the cost per lead and success rate of every campaign.
Find out how you can boost growth by keeping an eye on pipeline activities.
Managing pipelines without sandbagging or missed executions is already a challenge. In order to keep the sales executive, CFO, and CEO apprised of the progress from proposal to order to shipment and acceptance, professional services automation software creates real-time reporting. Reports that shed light on internal execution, proposal conversion rates, and the efficacy of site visits by personnel. Having this knowledge can assist you in recognizing effective sales execution, pinpointing areas where individual salespeople can improve, and determining the best course of action to strengthen a client's relationship.
#Productize opportunities by utilizing client feedback
For continuous customer assistance and project installations, every VAR keeps a support center. Insights gained from these exchanges can open doors to previously unrealized possibilities. In order to find additional products and sales prospects, PSA software identifies critical call concerns. End users are calling in droves to report problems with startup? It could be necessary to have an introduction training class in person. Is the client's IT department lacking in expertise? Managed services might be worth looking at now.
VARs may use PSA software to get the data they need to make smart decisions, like when to productize services for high-margin, recurring business and how to keep tabs on rising client interest.
By understanding your clients' installed environments, you can speed up upgrade prospects.
The tech business is in a constant state of flux, driven by an insatiable appetite for innovation. Customers in the end just can't keep up with how quickly new technologies are being adopted. Actually, they aren't always cognizant of the cost-cutting possibilities presented by certain upgrades and seldom make the most of the technology that is already in their possession.
When you know when and how a customer buys, you can sell more easily. The idea of being fully depreciated is central to the budgeting models of many IT directors. Sales activities can be set off to take advantage of this inherent financial knowledge when the timing of equipment depreciation is known. Innovative salespeople may also see this as a chance to propose additional contract conditions that include more than just this project or delivery. By proposing customized payment terms to alleviate the pain of lump sum payments and replacing all of a company's PCs over three years, they can steal a transaction off the street.
4. Internal Operations: By overseeing the rollout of new technologies, you can keep projects on track in terms of both time and money. Prior to it being an issue, real-time awareness can identify margin leakage.
Rapid revenue growth with manageable ramp-up expenses is possible with stringent oversight of new technology releases.
Preparing for the market with each new technology is an expensive and time-consuming process. You can find and handle important ramp-up tasks including licensing, staff training and certification, development environment setup, product distribution network arrangement, and more with PSA software that has good project management capabilities. Profitability frequently hinges on adept project and budget management and the prevention of cost overruns during technology ramp up, a massive internal undertaking that necessitates expensive capital expenditures. To ensure a well-prepared team and a timely, cost-effective launch, PSA software tools provide time and cost management analytics.
