The pandemic has made the business environment more challenging with companies seeing less growth and shrinking profit margins. In this new normal, businesses are curtailing unnecessary expenses and focusing on products and services that can add value and drive growth. However, the need for digital transformation is pushing businesses to adopt cloud solutions to facilitate continuity, creating unique opportunities for a Microsoft CSP.

New opportunities for a Microsoft CSP in the new normal

As a Microsoft CSP, you can adopt different strategies to leverage this opportunity and increase your business revenue and market share. The following tips can help you in expanding your customer base as well as selling more to your existing clients.

Create a digital footprint to expand reach and presence as a Microsoft CSP

Business growth in terms of increased reach and presence requires you to be more visible online. This not only helps to tap new customers but is also a way to let your existing customers know about new products and offerings. Expanding your digital footprint as a Microsoft CSP involves keeping your website updated with information on the products and business value you offer. Use social media to engage with your target audience and create awareness about your products. Focus on content creation that can be beneficial to your customers, this will increase the traffic on your website and help you generate more leads.

Offer new models of subscription-based services

Giving your customers the option of different payment models for their subscription-based services shows them that you are flexible. A customer who might be needing a few extra licenses for a couple of months would be unwilling to pay for them for the whole year. Offering monthly subscription services as a Microsoft CSP will promote incremental revenue rise.

You can also bundle up the subscription-based services for your customers. Even when given at a discount, selling the services as a bundled package helps you make more profit. Though offering new models will help you generate more revenue, it would add to your administrative costs and time. A billing automation tool can help you in managing the differing payment models and pricing while cutting down on your operational costs.

Learn to approach new customers

When approaching a new customer, understand the customer’s profile and buying preferences. Focus on the specific needs of the customer and offer tailored solutions. Explain the value of your product for their business without overpromising or making unsustainable claims. You can also offer discounts and incentives to first time customers. Make sure you have a comprehensive understanding of your target audience, and your offerings bridge the prevailing challenges.

Adopt automation and integration

Use automation tools for repetitive and time taking tasks such as billing, service delivery, etc. which can help cut administrative costs as a Microsoft CSP. It also frees up employees to focus on other revenue generating areas such as cross selling and upselling products to existing customers. Cloud management tools are easy to navigate, and customers use them to purchase additional services and can view all their purchase and billing related information at one place. The self-service feature can help you sell more products as customers can choose the offerings at their convenience.

Your customers would be using multiple business tools and would need to pull data from your portal to their systems. Doing so manually is time-consuming and would hamper their productivity. Offering them integrations which can help them seamlessly connect and transfer data would make their lives easier. The use of APIs for integration can be a source of additional revenue for you.

Build trust by offering seamless user experience

Attracting and acquiring a new customer takes more money and time as compared to retaining an existing one. Yet, a lot of companies focus more on customer acquisition than retention. Customer retention requires gaining the trust of your customers for which you need to deliver on the promise made while selling the product. Customers look for reliable service providers with a robust customer support system. If customers are unhappy with your service, they are unlikely to renew their subscriptions.

On the other hand, good customer experience increases loyalty and market share. To augment customer satisfaction, you can promote self-service, empower customers with control, offer discounts for loyal customers and share knowledge resources to help them grow their businesses. Put simply, CSPs can become a part of the growth journey of their customers to facilitate customer success and accelerate your revenue along the way.

As a CSP automation platform, C3 strives to enable cloud providers with services and tools to automate their internal financing and customer management seamlessly.

Additionally, we have a rich knowledge base to help Microsoft CSP start, scale, and succeed in their business. Do check it out.