How to reduce the time from prospect to customer and increase your MRR

If you’re looking to increase your Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR), one effective strategy is to speed up and refine your sales cycle to reduce the time it takes to convert prospects into clients. Unfortunately, this is often easier said than done.

Luckily, there are a few ways that you can maximize the efficiency of your sales funnel and accelerate the timeline. We’ve put together 9 tips specifically for MSPs who are ready to scale their MRR.

Vet your prospects

It’s good practice to vet your prospects to ensure that they’re strong potential leads and not just a dead end. This will minimize the amount of wasted energy, time and money, and mean that you’re dedicating your efforts to solid leads who are likely to convert.

The vetting process shouldn’t be one-sided. You can use your discovery call to ascertain whether the prospect does indeed fit into your target demographic. Don’t be afraid to wrap up a lead if you don’t think they’re the right fit.

Do your research

When preparing for your sales call, it’s essential that you do your research. A thorough understanding of your prospect’s business and needs will equip you with all the material you need to design a bespoke and compelling sales pitch. This will give you the highest chance of converting early on in the game.

Personalize the customer journey

Every customer is different. From a sales perspective, this means you’ll need to adapt your sales pipeline to each individual prospect, rather than approaching your potential customers with a one-size-fits-all strategy. For example, you may be faced with some clients who are seeking an MSP for the first time, whereas others may be looking to change providers. You should be ready to adapt your messaging and approach accordingly. This should, in theory, ensure that your sales pitch is as effective and relevant as possible.

Set out key expectations early

Make sure everyone is on the same page early on in the process. By clarifying your standard rates as well as the service you offer, there will be no surprises along the way. You should also look to pre-empt any apprehension or points of tension. If you address these at the outset, the prospect is less likely to change their mind or hesitate down the line.

Consistent follow up

Don’t give up too easily. Ensure to keep up consistent efforts to follow up with and nurture strong prospects. You should make yourself available to answer any questions or queries and keep communication lines open.

Since you want to keep your services at the top of their mind as far as possible, be creative about how you can remind your prospects of the value you’re offering. Think about proposing a demo or walkthrough, where relevant, or sharing positive client reviews with them. Every little bit of positive reinforcement makes a serious difference.

Automate key workflows

Another way to accelerate your sales funnel is to free up your or your sales team’s time. This can be achieved easily through automating labor intensive and administrative tasks such as email communications. Once you’ve done this, your efforts can be invested in the aspects of the sales funnel that actually need your attention.

Reduce barriers to entry

Make sure that there’s nothing stopping prospects from becoming customers. This includes making it as easy as possible to sign up, pay and start using your services. This extends into refining your website design to optimize the UX/UI and design. Believe it or not, this can make a significant difference to generating leads and improving your sales funnel.

Leverage your analytics

Rather than sticking to one formula, you should proactively seek to improve and refine your sales funnel using key insights, data and metrics into what’s working and what isn’t. This is an ongoing process that involves a certain amount of trial and error. In the long run, though, this should result in higher conversions and faster turnarounds.

Using an all-in-one IT management tool like Atera, you can generate automated reports that track and measure customers’ networks, assets, system health and overall performance.

Boost Your Revenue with Smarter IT Management

Effective patch management and remote monitoring and management (RMM) are crucial for optimizing IT service delivery and enhancing customer relationships. By streamlining patch management, businesses can ensure timely updates and security patches, minimizing vulnerabilities and system downtime. Remote monitoring and management, on the other hand, allows IT providers to proactively oversee client systems, address issues before they escalate, and deliver superior support. Integrating these strategies into your service offerings not only boosts operational efficiency but also reduces the time from prospect to customer. This proactive approach enhances client satisfaction, fosters trust, and ultimately drives revenue growth. Adopting robust patch management and RMM tools ensures a seamless experience for clients, supporting the transition from initial contact to a long-term, recurring relationship.

Use Atera to increase your MRR

On a practical level, MSPs should be maximizing the efficiency of their internal sales workflows using a platform like Atera. As we mentioned, automating administration-heavy tasks is an absolute must if you’re serious about leveling-up your sales funnel.

With Atera, you can manage all your billing and contracts from a centralized platform. Once your lead is ready to become a paying customer, the last thing you want is to leave them waiting while you draw up a contract. From your Atera dashboard, you can create customized and flexible contracts and SLAs, issue multiple contracts to the same client, track document statuses, and more.

Atera’s Network Discovery tool is also invaluable for maximizing your MRR. Network Discovery gives you critical visibility over your clients’ IT environments. Beyond its obvious practical technical benefits, Network Discovery also helps MSPs identify lucrative upsell opportunities — another great way to up your MRR.