Do you have a dashboard for your managed services practice? If not, you are missing out on an amazing opportunity to connect with your prospects and customers in a very real, very significant way. For many people not doing IT we are just geeks who operate in a black box of sorts. Dashboards give outsiders a glimpse of all that you do for them.
Here is an excerpt from Seth Godin’s Blog that I think has incredible relevance for ITSP and IT Departments alike.
Building good dashboards isn’t difficult, but it’s an excellent marketing strategy. A few brainstorms:
1. If you can add a digital dashboard to your service, do it.
2. If you can make the dashboard public, it gets more powerful.
3. Highlight data that changes behavior.
4. Allow the user to highlight the information that matters to them.
If you have an office, then a publicly viewable dashboard can be a great sales tool and should be an integral part of any customer visit. Some of Seth’s points are most relevant for web dashboards, but the most important is that it is public. Or even just semi-public (customers only). Putting the data out there holds the service provider accountable, and provides a transparency that builds trust.
If you have a dashboard let’s see it. Post a link to the dashboard or a screenshot in the comments.
