SALES STRATEGIES
The Right( and Wrong) Way to Transition to the Tech Assessment in Your MSP Sales Process
From uncovering hidden risks to strengthening your proposal, the tech audit gives you the hard data to back up your proposal— and the leverage to win the deal. Here’ s how to shift gears from the discovery meeting without stalling your sale.
After you’ ve spent time discovering a prospect’ s emotional pain points and potential objections, it’ s time to look under the hood of their network.
Step 3 of the 5-Step Process to Closing an MSP Sale is the technical assessment. Sitima Fowler and Ray Green, MSP sales experts who teach this process, explain how to expertly transition from the discovery meeting to the technical assessment in order to find additional pain and close the sale. If you missed the previous installment on how to uncover hidden objections, see the August / September Issue of MSP Success by scanning the QR code or go to MSPSuccess. com / issue / august-september-2025.
Why You Need the Tech Assessment
Some MSPs don’ t conduct the technical assessment because it’ s too expensive. Others use it as their entire sales process. There are major flaws to both approaches.
She Said: Conducting an assessment is important because sometimes a prospect tells you they have fewer servers than they actually do. It’ s awkward to ask the prospect for more money after you already gave them a price, all because you didn’ t do your due diligence correctly.
Also, a prospect might think they don’ t have any problems with their network, but the assessment may reveal gaping holes they didn’ t know about. Those two pieces of information are critical when you’ re putting together a winning proposal.
He Said: You not only want to know what’ s under the hood but the levers you can pull in the next meeting to help close the sale. Up to this point, you’ ve been looking for emotional drivers. Sales is almost always a transference of emotion; it’ s an emotional decision that people justify with logic. The technical assessment gives you some of the logic that the prospect is going to use to justify the sale.
A lot of MSPs think if they just do the assessment and show the prospect logically why they need these services, that it should sell itself. That’ s not the case. The assessment builds on everything you did in the discovery meeting, so don’ t skip steps.
She said: Remember— the result of the assessment is your leverage. Don’ t send the results over an email. You need to build up the value of the assessment, incorporate the results into your proposal, and justify why they need to sign up for your services. You want them excited to see the results! This will keep you from getting ghosted for future meetings.
Transitioning to the Assessment
To transition from the discovery meeting to the audit, you’ ll first need to propose the idea to the client by building maximum value of the tech assessment.
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