A sales matrix is a simple way to identify opportunity. Think of all the products and services you offer and all of your existing the clients who use or could use those offerings. Arrange them in a matrix as follows:
Now in one chart you can quickly identify your sales opportunities by client account or solution. For example, Client A and Client B are opportunities to cross sell Office 365.
A sales matrix should identify your best-practices product solutions (or technology stack) for clients. Once you categorize a client based on industry, size, location or some combination, you should be able to fit them into your matrix and match them with the preferred solutions.
Spreadsheet-based sales matrixes are great tools when you have a smaller number of clients and a smaller number of products, but what happens when you are confronted with the following:
- Large number of clients with different product needs. For example, out of state clients won’t be good opportunities for a full managed services solution.
- Large number of product offerings and opportunities. Too many columns and it becomes difficult to read the matrix.
- Too many clients implementing new solutions in the same month or quarter. For example, performing a single client’s hardware refresh can overwhelm existing staff.
- Identify client or user-specific opportunities. For example, a user at Client C needs a new laptop.
- Multiple account managers maintaining the matrix with differing processes.
Sales matrixes are a great concept, but to work for most MSPs, they need to be able to:
- Incorporate planning across multiple quarters to balance staff demand.
- Incorporate suggestions from support personnel and account managers.
- Update automatically for as many areas as possible to reduce preparation time and errors.
- Provide client transparency to allow clients to see and understand the benefits of the solutions they haven’t yet implemented.
- Scale for any size clients so that even smaller clients can benefit from being managed on the sales matrix.
A sales matrix properly implemented is one of the most valuable tools in the MSPs sales kit.
CloudRadial’s Account Planner feature delivers this capability in a way that also makes it easy to present to clients in the CloudRadial client portal. More importantly for MSPs, the Account Planner gathers and presents the data necessary to:
- Focus account management activity
- Help clients understand the services MSPs offer
- Set clear goals for client growth
- Score or rank clients against each other
- Elevate client conversations to focus on new project and MRR opportunities
- Balance project delivery needs against staffing capabilities
- Project revenue and profit growth for the business
- Scale account management with hiring more people
Best of all, the Account Planner is part of the integrated CloudRadial solutions and just one of many features that helps MSPs manage, engage and grow clients.