A Simple Guide For MSPs To Upsell SaaS Backup Solutions To Existing Clients

SaaS backup solutions, like Asigra SaaSAssure, can help you boost your margins by increasing your client offerings. To do so, effectively communicating the value of essential services like backing up...

SaaS backup solutions, like Asigra SaaSAssure, can help you boost your margins by increasing your client offerings. To do so, effectively communicating the value of essential services like backing up SaaS data is crucial. In this blog, we’ll share key strategies to help you frame these important conversations. Here’s what you can expect:

  • Learn effective strategies to communicate the importance of SaaS backup solutions to clients who may not see the value.
  • Get actionable insights on discussing security resiliency, efficiency boosts, and compliance concerns with your clients.
  • Find out how to keep the conversation going with clients post-discussion to ensure their data security remains a priority.

MSPs are unique organizations. Not only must they be thoroughly knowledgeable and ultra-competent providers of the solutions they manage, but they also must be good at client relationships as well. These are vastly different skills, but both count when upselling clients on a much-needed solution.

Even though an MSP may know a client will benefit from a reliable SaaS backup solution, that’s not always clear to the client. The MSPs job, then is to help client understand the issue, the solution – and why they can trust an MSP to manage it. What follows is a list of helpful ideas for framing this discussion with clients.

How To Upsell Clients A SaaS Backup Solution

More Than Just a Provider

There’s no doubt many MSPs (whether 10 employees or 100) work hard at providing their services. Don’t let the urge to provide trouble-free services get in the way of being a proactive advisor.

 

Stay curious: Use regular contact to get a sense of how clients are tracking toward important goals. Ask open-ended questions and let them explain their thinking.

 

Help first, advise later: Prove or demonstrate knowledge by offering to help with tasks related to better SaaS management. Offer to help with security audits or help clients with inventories of SaaS apps.

 

Use follow-ups or leave behinds: Clients will make decisions at their own pace. Follow up calls by sending useful links to news or blogs of interest – or leave behind print outs of guides, articles, or whitepapers. Use a resource page like this to get ideas.

Moving the Conversation to Security Resiliency

Is the client currently backing up their SaaS data? If so, they are likely using a solution that covers only a few apps (Microsoft 365, for instance), leaving most business-critical data unsecured. Explain the security risks. Some clients may not be backing up this data at all.

 

Define the risk: How much critical data would they say is in SaaS apps and not secured? Are they aware that SaaS apps and specifically the databases of SaaS services are increasingly targets of data theft.

 

Their data, their responsibility: Make sure they understand SaaS vendors are not responsible for backing up their data. See more about the shared responsibility model in “MSP Guide to Understanding the MSP Model”.

 

Recommended by vendors: Let them know that even among SaaS vendor services, in their own terms of service they often specifically recommend that users secure their data with third-party backup tools.

Talking Point - Boosting Efficiency

Explain the quick and tangible benefits from offloading their SaaS data management to a trusted MSP. Many of the benefits result in saving valuable time and effort, improving productivity.

 

 Free up staff time: SaaS vendors only offer snapshots or manual file exports for data backups, which can be time-consuming. An MSP using a solution like SaaSAssure can automate this process, allowing staff to focus on more important tasks.

 

Quick, hassle-free startup: With a solution like SaaSAssure, MSPs can use preconfigured connectors to many widely used SaaS apps. No agents or server-side configurations required, and set-up can be done in less than five minutes per app. Also, SaaSAssure is a bring your own storage option – helping clients use these resources without any additional work/effort.

 

Fast restores: The big advantage comes when SaaS data is lost, missing or unavailable in a widespread outage. A reliable SaaS backup solution makes quick, low-touch restores possible because of diligently automating backups for all business-critical data.

Talking Point - Better Cybersecurity And Compliance

Unencrypted data from SaaS vendors downloads are inherently vulnerable. If not encrypted, this puts data at risk. What makes more sense is a SaaS data backup solution that automatically encrypts data. Let clients know the security benefits can come with the right backup solution.

 

Solid security: SaaSAssure encrypts data both in transit (as in a download from a SaaS vendor) as well as in storage using the highest encryption standards possible (AES 256-bit encryption).

 

Mitigating compliance worries: Small and large organizations are very likely to have sensitive customer information stored in SaaS apps. In addition to MFA, SaaSAssure also requires multiperson authentication (approval from multiple users) for any potentially harmful actions to stored data.

Talking Point - Better Oversight And Control of Data

Just as many organizations have a problem with Shadow IT, many may not know the full extent of how many SaaS apps are in use. This leads to siloed information, security gaps, overlaps in SaaS services purchased, and general inefficiencies at scale. 

 

Improve data management: A centrally managed SaaS backup solution managed by a trusted MSP can help clients get more control, more visibility over this data. Using a tool like SaaSAssure, MSPs can help clients identify all their critical data and map these out for better knowledge and management.

 

Insight into app usage and cost: With better oversight and control, clients can make informed decisions on allocation of budget and resources (and employee time). Many companies are trying to “rationalize” app usage to cut down on. redundancies or underperforming SaaS usage. 

Continuing The Conversation

While helping better control and manage their SaaS data, MSPs will no doubt gain useful insights. Don’t let the conversation end on good SaaS backup management’s importance and benefits to the client. Here are a few potential actions to keep that conversation going.

  • Find out how much data was protected/backed up before using a SaaS backup solution?
  • Find out How much data is now being protected/backed up?
  • Provide information on how much data is being backed up over time.
  • Offer to define your role in any cyber incident response plans (esp. regarding data restores).
  • Ask to help with any data restore and recovery drills.
  • Review alerts and activity logs for any security-related trends to discuss with your client.

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