When it comes to successfully selling managed service offerings, it’s all about the extra value you can bring to the table. What sets your managed service provider (MSP) business apart? Why should your clients choose you over the competition?
In a competitive landscape MSPs need to actively show their customers that their money is well spent, whatever the services rendered might be. This can be difficult, especially when a lot of the tools customers use every day—Microsoft 365, for example—are readily available from a number of different providers.
Office Protect can be a key differentiator for MSPs looking to add meaningful value to their offering. The importance of cybersecurity cannot be understated, and Microsoft 365 can be an easy target for malicious actors. And yet, an overwhelming number of businesses simply don’t pay close attention to protecting critical Microsoft 365 data from cyberattacks or human error. Office Protect makes managing security for Microsoft 365 as easy as possible, and therefore is a great add-on to any Microsoft 365 offer.
Even so, not every client is going to understand the value behind every line item on their monthly service bill. MSPs must be prepared to answer potential objections, regardless of whether the service increases customer cybersecurity or not. With this in mind, here are six ways MSPs can package Office Protect to increase revenue while also keeping clients’ data safe.
6 ways MSPs can package Office Protect
1. Go beyond the line-item sales approach
Anyone that’s tried to sell products or services as a single SKU on a monthly bill knows that it can be challenging. The best way to present this type of add-on is as a practical application and integral part of doing business with your MSP. Customers expect all their IT needs to be managed; it’s best to focus on multiple services that go together to make client systems more secure than just focusing on the single line item. Therefore, by packaging Office Protect alongside Microsoft 365 in general—not as an add-on that customers can pick and choose on their own—you can avoid the line-item sales approach and impress upon your clients that their cybersecurity is of utmost importance to you.
2. Starting the cybersecurity conversation
One of the best ways to engage clients in productive conversation about Office Protect is through a discovery meeting about their specific business objectives. Taking the time to understand your clients’ unique needs—especially as they pertain to cybersecurity and protecting Microsoft 365 data—will go a long way when it comes time to explain how your value proposition meets those needs.
3. Deploy bundled offers
Bundles are a tried and true method for MSPs to offer multiple products to clients at a lower price than offering each solution individually. Because security is so essential today, there’s more than enough grounds for an MSP to bundle Office Protect with their base packages for Microsoft 365.
4. Layered security approach
The concept of layered cybersecurity addresses the importance of developing network security with multiple controls to safeguard the most exposed sections of a company’s IT structure. Take Zero Trust for example; anyone trying to access network resources must show verification, regardless of whether they come from within or outside the network. Office Protect is in alignment with Zero Trust best practices, effectively adding an additional layer of security to clients’ Microsoft 365 environments. Packaging Office Protect this way can help quell any (albeit misguided) objections to having the software included with your Microsoft 365 offers.
5. Standardize your support offer
As previously mentioned, many of our most successful partners leverage Office Protect as an automatic add-on instead of focusing on the single line-item approach. This can be done by baking Office Protect into your Microsoft 365 offer. It can also be done by packaging Office Protect as part of your standard support offering. Adding the benefits of 24/7 monitoring, alerts and response capabilities to the value proposition for technical support not only minimizes objections to the service, but highlights cybersecurity as a non-negotiable part of your offering.
6. Focus on business outcomes
When discussing managed services, it is essential to focus on the value and ultimate business outcomes realized for the client. Office Protect is designed to save clients time and money while increasing their overall security. By offloading security monitoring and reporting and diminishing the number of false positive security incidents (among other features), Office Protect helps clients reclaim time spent looking for specific security settings or managing alerts. It’s also no secret that potential cost of a data breach can be monumental. Office Protect helps here as well but decreasing the chances that important business data will be compromised.
Take your managed security offering a step further with Office Protect Alliance
Office Protect Alliance gives MSPs access to alerting, monitoring and reporting tools necessary to improve Microsoft 365 security, but with the added benefit of offloading management of the solution to Sherweb’s in-house security experts. For MSPs with limited security talent, this is an excellent way to grow your cybersecurity offering without having to pay additional salaries. It’s also a good way to be able to provide after-hours service, making sure your clients are still protected when no one is watching.
Reach out to us to learn more about how to package Office Protect to enhance your MSP offering and make cybersecurity a standard part of your service delivery, or how to leverage Office Protect Alliance to scale your security business. You can also join Sherweb’s partner program to get started today.
