Case Global VoiceLink: Data-Driven MSP Sales Approach

Global VoiceLink is a full-service IT Managed Service Provider with over 100 environments under management. Their innovative Sales team has adopted a data-driven approach which has given them a competitive advantage: enabled them to provide better customer service, made working with customers more effortless, and sped up their sales cycles.

Global VoiceLink culture and way of working with customers center around honesty and transparency. They offer both turnkey IT outsourcing as well as one-off IT projects for companies of all sizes. Global VoiceLink takes care of the Service Desk, development of the IT environment, endpoint sales & maintenance, and security. Their standard package includes Applixure. Applixure is used by Service Desk, their technical team, and their sales team. In addition, each customer has access to their Applixure instance, which aligns with their value of transparency.

Marko Nousiainen is one of the founders and Head of Sales at Global VoiceLink. Marko has been in the industry for 25 years – first on the technical implementation side and in sales for the past 12 years. Working as a technician, he saw too many solutions sold to customers that were not ideal for their needs. Today, he aims to work with each customer to find the best solution to fit that customer's needs.

When Marko first encountered Applixure and the data and insights it provides, he recognized the possibilities that easy access to relevant data opens up. Today, his whole team uses Applixure in their sales and customer work. Marko explains:

Marko's team uses the data they get from Applixure in their everyday customer work – both in new sales and account management. He has found that the data-driven approach makes it easier to discuss development needs with customers and increases customers' confidence in his recommendations. Marko explains:

Marko shared how he's made use of data to win new customers. He described the situation where he's meeting with a prospect for the first time and asks them his typical discovery-phase questions when it's become clear that the prospect does not know in what kind of shape their PC environment is.

In these cases, Marko has recommended that Global VoiceLink shed some light on the situation by installing Applixure on all computers, allowing data to collect for a couple of weeks, and then sitting down together to take a look. Marko describes the typical reaction when the prospect sees what's going on in their environment for the first time:

Once the prospect has had their eyes opened and can see the areas which need improvement, the decision to start working with Global VoiceLink to make those improvements has been easy to make.

Using data in Sales is not unfamiliar to Marko: in the past, they used data too. Marko describes it like this:

Digging up the data meant asking the technical team to pull data on a customer environment, then spending hours analyzing the data to tease out the insights, and finally pulling it together into a presentable format. As you can imagine, this was a very time-consuming process. And often, the salesperson would still feel more comfortable having a tech team member sit in on the customer meeting just in case there were questions about the data. Today, Marko and his team use Applixure - so there is no need for manual digging and analysis. Marko summarizes:

Applixure delivers insights by pointing out hardware, software, and usage issues that Global VoiceLink should look at. And, because Applixure presents the data in an easy-to-understand graphical format, Marko does not even need to create those presentations as he did in the past: he logs into Applixure during the customer meeting and shares his findings directly from there.

Easy access to well-structured data and insights has saved Marko and his team, and the technical team lots of time and effort. They can no longer imagine life without the visibility it brings. Marko explains:

Access to easy-to-use data has changed how Global VoiceLink Sales works. Here are a few of the ways:

1. Selling the right things

Marko has found that having data enables him to have a completely different level of conversation with his customers. He doesn't have to guess what the customer needs because he can look at the data and see what they have and where the issues lie. For example, do they have old hardware, unencrypted hard disks, or old versions of software? It feels delicious to know that you make recommendations to customers based on facts and complex data.

2. Faster Sales cycles

Sales cycles are faster when there is data to support the proposal. For example, Marko can propose that a customer replace aging computers not just because of their age but because data from Applixure shows that they are having performance issues that affect employees' ability to work. That data makes it easier for the customer to make the purchase decision quickly – after all, employees must have good tools to do their work.

3.  Time savings

It was common to take a member of the technical team to customer meetings in the past. Today that is done much less often. Instead, the Account Manager will meet with the Technical Specialist to look through the customer's data in Applixure before the customer meeting. The Technical Specialist might suggest specific data to show the customer about the environment. And then, the Account Manager can handle the customer meeting on their own – thus saving the technical team's time.

Global VoiceLink's technical team uses the data in Applixure to manage customer environments proactively. Their proactive approach means they have fewer issues reported and are easier to handle because the Service Desk has visibility into what is going on with each computer and its software. Generally, if updates are done proactively and in a timely fashion, everything goes smoothly. Marko explains the difference that this proactive model makes:

Though Global VoiceLink's proactive approach to managing their customer environments means fewer issues, there will always be issues whenever computers and software are involved. That's when Service Desk steps in. Global VoiceLink's Service Desk also uses the visibility that Applixure offers to make their life easier. When they get a call from a customer, they can look at that computer's data to help them resolve the case quickly.

For example, if someone calls and says that their battery life is poor, the Service Desk can see in Applixure that yes, in fact, its performance is only 60% of what a new one is and then order that uses a new battery.

Appliuxre's Rewind to History feature helps Service Desk troubleshoot as it shows a computer's change history for up to 1 year back. So, if someone contacts the Service Desk and complains that their computer keeps crashing, Service Desk can see all the things going on in that computer. Without Applixure, they'd need to interview the user to tease out the relevant information – so having the data saves them time and enables them to make the correct diagnosis more efficiently.

Marko has been thrilled with his team's data-driven way of working and continues to develop his own and his team's abilities. When asked what his advice to others who are managing computer and software environments, Marko shared this insight: