One of the best parts of my job is when I get to sit down in person, face to face, and speak with audIT users.
Good or bad, I always love hearing their feedback and how we can help them even more. Happy to report, these conversations are almost exclusively good feedback as is the case with this MSP.
On a recent trip, I had the pleasure of meeting long-time audIT user, Willie Kearns. His MSP is called SmartPath Technologies located in Western Kentucky.
We spent quite a bit of time just talking about his business and how audIT has helped it grow. Willie agreed to record this case study to share his valuable insights with the MSP community.
Watch the full case study
Here's the key takeaways from the full case study
The basics
- Willie’s MSP supports about 60 clients and about 1k endpoints.
- He has 8 to 9 employees
- Been an audit user for 4 years
- He uses audIT for both business reviews and new sales presentations
Willie noted that audIT has been one of the best tools in terms of increasing the revenue that they have.
1: Why he uses audIT for his TBRs
His TBR’s easily generate 6 figures per year. But it also helps them keep their clients happy and solve problems before they become a problem.
2: He loves the flexibility audIT offers him
As far as ease of use, Willie finds audIT one of the easiest-to-use tools that they have.
He makes heavy use of the audIT tool called ‘The Fact Finder’. This was created as a simple note-taking device for MSPs to use when collecting information during the technical assessment.
In addition to using the Fact Finder in his sales assessments, he also has his team use them in the TBR process.
3: Why he uses audIT for TBRs instead of a more technical tool
I asked Willie why he didn’t use a different tool for TBRs.
He said that in a nutshell, it’s because audIT lets him sell more.
He went on to explain that his clients are not technical. They understand the basics, but technology is not their thing.
When he went in with other documents that explained why they needed a firewall, for example, it just went over their heads.
They don’t care about the speeds of VPN or anything else technical. They care that at night when they need to connect to their computer, they can do it.
audIT allows a technical organization like SmartPath Technologies, to relay facts to their non-technical clients in a way everyone can understand. He also said audIT almost 'gamifys' it. His clients want to improve their score and actively work to improve it.
With no shortage of new tools in the MSP market, it’s no surprise that users leave us to try them from time to time. However, many of them come back because they realize exactly what Willie mentions here…
That the other tools are technical. And they don’t help him sell.
If you’re a former audIT user reading this, we’d love to have you back too if you’re ready.
4: How Willie suggests MSPs should talk to their clients
A lot of MSPs get excited about the technology and wants to get their client excited about it too. But the thing is that unless you’re having a business discussion in their language, they don’t care for it.
Many times, MSPs are forcing clients to work the way they want them to work. But Willie believes as MSPs, we need to work the way the client works. This starts by speaking in their language.
He feels audIT makes it very simple. They don’t care the new printer has 6 paper trays and can do this and can do it at this speed…
5: What the client needs compared to what they want
The client needs many levels of security. These days, they can’t just have anti-virus and call it a day. Then need deeper protection which often means layered products from the MSP.
But explaining this to the client goes over their heads and can be confusing. All the clients care is that you have a $35 per employee, per month security package that includes what they need, for example.
6: How audIT has changed things for his MSP
Willie shares a story about how his sales rep who was on vacation. But there were TBRs scheduled that he now needed to prepare and do.
He was able to effectively prepare for them and produce the reports in under one hour. This would never have happened in such a short amount of time before.
But the bottom line for him is he makes good money from TBRs. Compared to several years ago, Willie feels confident saying audIT has increased the amount of projects and money they generated from TBRs has increased tenfold.
7: A candid look at his revenue numbers
He explains that he is doing over $200 per seat with revenue at about 1.6 million in very rural western Kentucky.
Again and again he comes back to the point that the client does not want to talk tech.
Willie stresses that to sell effectively, MSPs need to speak their customer’s language. This is why he uses audIT and what it does for him is exactly that.
8: What he would say to other MSPs about audIT
I challenged Willie, as a huge advocate of audIT, to tell me what he’d say to his peers if he was working at our booth at a trade show.
At every tradeshow I have gone to, there’s always one user who does some selling at our booth. They might have stopped by to say hi to us. But then some MSP comes and asks about audIT and they jump in.
Quite frankly, it’s a ton of fun for me to watch our users do an amazing job explaining how audIT will help them. After all, who better to talk about the value than a user?
Willie shares what he would say in this clip.
9: How he uses other tools like Galactic Scan with audIT
In this final clip, I asked Willie what other tools he was using in sales and his TBRs.
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