With more than 20 years behind them, BIZTOPIA provides businesses with complete, tailored and managed business-grade Information Technology solutions. It's founder, Michael Munt says his mission is simple; "To leave customers happier, more educated and more profitable than before we walked through the door."
Michael recently completed the SalesPlay On-Ramp™ program, being certified as Go-to-Market Ready by Partner Elevate. We sat down with Michael to hear his experience with the program.
What was Biztopia struggling with before the program?
Before embarking on the 90-day Sales Play On-Ramp™ program, we had a fairly loose marketing plan. A little bit scattergun. We'd done a lot of marketing over several years and were successful in building brand awareness in Southeast Queensland. During that time, we had exponential growth, but when we got to where we needed to be, we ramped down again.
By this point, I felt we were very good at establishing our own brand message, but not necessarily about the exact services we were offering. I would say we were promoting ourselves as generalist managed services provisioning.
So, we realised that we needed to start narrowing down exactly what we wanted to offer in terms of products and services, and define who our target market was to be more focused in our marketing activity.
Initial thoughts?
When I saw the Partner Elevate Sales Play On-Ramp™ program, to be honest, I thought it might be just another one of those generalist sales training courses - where they give you a heap of information but not really help you apply it. Either that, or the program is so generalised that it’s tough to make it specific to your business.
After finding out a bit more information and talking with our distributor, I knew this program was what Biztopia needed, but was hesitant because I didn't know how much of my time it would take up.
We’re all so busy with competing priorities, it’s hard to commit to something when you’re not sure about how it will look in practice.
How was your journey?
Once I started the program, the thing that stood out was the focus it gave us to distil our messaging down to what we were really doing. That meant we had clarity on who we were targeting, and how we were going to measure that.
Before, we had a nebulous marketing approach that led into a typical sales process.
We would receive lead, deliver a quote and talk about our points of difference, and either get a ‘yes’ or ‘no’. We didn't have any sort of formal tools like the ones delivered in the SalesPlay On-Ramp™ Program. What’s great about that, is we now have the fundamentals in place to always to come back to with new offers we take to market.
Where are you now?
I think the program has given everybody a sense of purpose.
We're a small team, but I've been able to talk through the process with everyone and help define what we're selling and who we're focusing on. The team understand the types of conversations we can start to have - even upsell conversations that may have been daunting before. I think this has helped empower the staff to feel more confident in talking about our services.
We have relationships with clients that go back 23 years and they’re still on the books. They stick with us because we take an interest in their business not just look after their IT. Because of that, a lot of the time our clients are building long term relationships with the same primary and secondary technician who's devoted to the day-to-day management of their IT. So, our technicians have formed that trusting relationship with our clients who look to them for advice. Some of the tools used throughout the program are ones that our technicians can use to have the right conversations with our clients, if they find themselves in a position of decision-making or cross-selling opportunities directly with the client.
Being heavily focused on Microsoft products and services, the program and its tools have helped us align with Microsoft’s Sales Plays, and will help us define any future go-to-market offerings that we will use to grow our business.
So, to any Microsoft Partner that wants the fundamentals to defining their go-to-market offers, drilling down on their messages and finding their target market with reusable tools and processes for the future, I encourage you to get involved in this program.
