Richard speaks with Bob Kocis, Chief Revenue Officer of Continuum, an outsourced Network Operations Centre (NOC) provider for IT Managed Service Providers (MSPs).
An Interview with Bob Kocis
Who is Bob Kocis?
Bob Kocis is Continuum’s Chief Revenue Officer. As well as having over 20 years’ experience in global sales leadership and management to the IT industry, he has a Bachelor’s degree in Marine Biology Systems from the United States Merchant Marine Academy and is a graduate of the General Dynamics Nuclear Engineering School.
What does Continuum do?
They support their Managed Service Provider (MSP) clients or partners. With 5,800 clients around the globe, Continuum provides best-in-class software, including an RMM (remote monitoring and management) platform supported with a fully-integrated NOC (network operations centre), along with a BDR (backup disaster recovery) solution.
Their helpdesk provides a white label helpdesk service to their end clients and their single IT management platform focuses on supporting low-class MSPs. Not only that, but they offer white label content that partners can use to onboard a new client, as well as training courses as part of ‘Continuum U’ to help MSPs position the clients in the right way, sell the helpdesk and take things to the next level.
If you’re considering a service such as Continuum for your business, check out my article on How to Choose an MSP NOC Provider.
What has Stayed the Same in Sales?
Throughout his career, Bob says the key is to care about and listen to your customer, you understand their pain points and challenges, and you’re being empathetic to what they’re going through.
MSPs are solving a business problem and making their customers’ businesses better, rather than pushing a product on them. Focusing on this instead of the features and functions of your services means you have more integrated customers who’ll stay with you longer.
How IT Companies can Sell Themselves Better
There needs to be consistency in the sales culture, and Bob says it’s vital to give the in-house sales and technical teams the right content. If you ask two people what the company mission is and they give two different answers, that’s a problem.
Everyone in the company needs to use the same messages and value propositions. As the business owner, it’s easy to forget about those details, so they don’t become a priority. That is a critical item that needs to happen. Staff also need a uniform way to solve the most common objections that end users have to the business services.
How Social Selling can Help Your MSP
Bob worked with LinkedIn on sales processes and noticed that B2B companies were increasingly making decisions based on social media. Furthermore, this was affecting not only his sales team and the wider industry, as people researched solution options and formed opinions about the providers.
This led to Bob pivoting his teams to become ‘social sellers’ – engaging on social platforms with the company’s content to demonstrate thought leadership, recommendations from other companies and professionals. He admits that small businesses are getting better at this, but there’s still a lot of work to be done.
The customer is inundated with so many messages that they become confused, so they go to the people they talk to on a routine basis, and consider them to be thought leaders. It’s vital that your business is the one they see as the expert, and they choose to work with you.
How Continuum Guarantee Excellence
Bob says they spend a lot of time bringing a new customer in, as the onboarding process is designed to get the customer to leverage Continuum’s solutions the right way, to ensure they’re happy with what they’ve bought and they can see how this will improve their processes.
They focus on this phase so they can be more proactive and less reactive, and get it right at the start so there are fewer problems later on. They have their best people in customer support to manage any issues that do occur.
Mentioned in This Episode:
- Learn more about Continuum: https://www.continuum.net/
- Follow them on Twitter: @FollowContinuum
- Find Continuum on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/continuum-managed-services-llc
- Connect with Bob Kocis on LinkedIn
- Email Bob: bo*******@co*******.net
Interview Transcription
Transcript – TubbTalk 20 with Bob Kocis and Richard Tubb
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Richard Tubb is one of the best-known experts within the global IT Managed Service Provider (MSP) community. He launched and sold his own MSP business before creating a leading MSP media and consultancy practice. Richard helps IT business owner’s take back control by freeing up their time and building a business that can run without them. He’s the author of the book “The IT Business Owner’s Survival Guide” and writer of the award-winning blog www.tubblog.co.uk
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