DattoCon Paris promises to be the biggest of the vendor's events in Europe as it aims to boost channel enablement. The event aims to help both existing MSPs, and those putting a toe in the water. As Christian Nagele, Sr. Director, EMEA Strategy, says: “One of the more encouraging and really enlivening things about our market is you get this constant run of new entrants coming in – a long tail of the market, the two- to 10-man band.”
The message of growth in the right way is clear: “An MSP who has a level of lead generation capability may actually find a lot of it is referral business and it's still the owner founders knocking the business into the back of the net. They're really wrestling with the sales and marketing because they don't have the free cash flow to risk too much experimentation to do that.”
“The idea I keep coming back to is that MSPs allocate scarce marketing resources as efficiently as possible just to drive a really positive company presence.”
The problem is, so can everybody else, because there's no capital involved. So MSPs are looking to differentiate yourself from the run of the mill, very similar operation.
He recommends a return to marketing basics - and that starts with simplifying the website, case studies, collateral, - the kind of service delivery function that can come in and play a part in the sales process.
“When it comes back to DattoCon, the future for us is the MSPs who will continue their journey onwards. And huge credit to them because there are many operating at that sort of scale, you know. But I agree that at the end of the market that still has the same need for our technology, I just don't think there's enough help in the industry for them.”
Hence the need for a learning environment that pulls in all the experts, like DattoCon.
“For me, this concept of customer success incorporates not only just helping people try to maximize their investment in a product by maximizing utilization, but what else are we doing to help our customers?
There's a whole host of things MSPs could be doing: sales and marketing, business optimization, all this kind of thing, and with simple steps, he says. “Just make sure you don't bite off more than you can chew. You're clear on the business case and actually every other aspect of your business is optimized to capitalize on the leads that your sales team hopefully generate.”
To register for DattoCon please visit: https://www.dattocon.com/
