12 IT Call-To-Action Ideas To Replace Your “Free Consultation”

Your website’s call-to-action is what drives visitors to act. While most MSP websites feature a “free consultation” or “free quote,” these vague options do very little to entice these visitors and motivate them to move further through your funnel. This is primarily because these consultations have no real value ( or at least that’s how they seem to the visitor). At this point, everyone knows that this consultation is just a typical discovery and sales pitch, which can be a long, drawn out, and painful experience to say the least.

On behalf of business owners everywhere, I always recommend MSPs change their “free quote” to something more tangible. Something you could deliver for “free” that would otherwise require payment to receive. In doing so, you can still perform a lite discovery and qualification, then deliver your quote after you have delivered on whatever it is your call-to-action is offering.

Here are a few call-to-actions that you can use to deliver immediate value (while secretly qualifying your prospects):

Free Dark Web Scan

If you have a relationship with a Dark Web Scan provider then you likely have the ability to perform one time scans on a domain as part of your plan. Use this call-to-action to offer a free scan and then provide a quote for your recommended security bundle along with the results. These scans have a pretty high hit rate from my experience, so it definitely helps to motivate your prospect and get them thinking about security, especially if they have never had this type of scan before.

Free Network Assessment

If you use a network assessment tool when doing discovery and/or onboarding new clients, then you are one step ahead of being able to offer this for free as a call-to-action. Performing this type of scan on an network will inevitable lead to the discovery of projects and will be a perfect lead-in to quoting full managed services. Even if you don’t have one of the industry standard network tools, you can still perform a manual assessment using your custom designed checklist or report template.

Free Compliance Review

With major cybersecurity incidents dominating the headlines, more governments and regulatory agencies are tightening their compliance guidelines. This has proven to be confusing for business owners as they find it difficult to understand what guidelines they should follow and whether or not their business meets the minimum requirements. Offering a compliance review will allow you to better clarify this for the business owner and will enable you to offer them a path toward maintaining compliance moving forward.

Free Phishing Test

Phishing simulation and security awareness training are two trending services primarily being driven by the compliance guidelines mentioned previously. Offering a free phishing test to your visitors will not only allow them to demo this service first-hand, but the results of the test often help to create demand for ongoing services that can be quoted thereafter. According to KnowBe4, 37.9% of untrained users will fail their first phishing test, which is enough to build a strong case for your offering.

Free Breach Check

Chances are, your visitors information (as well their employee’s/coworker’s info) has been included in one of the thousands of data breaches that occur each year. Now you can offer them a free breach check of their entire domain using “Have I Been Pwned?” or another breach searching database as a courtesy. These results can be used to build a case for multi-factor authentication, password management, and other security related bundles.

Free IT Budget Review

Very few IT budgets go unspent. This is why it is always difficult for business owners to understand whether or not their budget is sufficient or insufficient for their company size and industry. Offering your visitors a budget review and helping them compare their spending against industry data will help them better understand how to spend their money no matter who they choose to work with.

Free vCIO Session

Sometimes business owners and C-suite executives just need an another opinion from someone they can trust. Offering a 30-60 minute consulting session that can be booked through your appointment setting tool will allow you to connect with prospects and offer legitimate them real expertise. Just make sure that you are delivering on your promise of C-suite level knowledge and avoid using inexperienced sales and account managers to fulfill these meetings.

Free Security Score

Cybersecurity has never been more complicated. Unfortunately this truth comes at a time when it also has never been in higher demand. Use a scoring tool or create your own scoring system to help your audience understand where they stand and how they can improve. This also allows you to provide them a roadmap to increase their score, by activating services that will better protect their business.

Free IT Support Block

Sometimes your website visitors just need a helping hand. It’s possible that they have an issue that is preventing them from working and they just can’t seem to get the attention of their current provider to get help. While most MSPs prefer to push clients immediately into full service bundles with a long drawn out sales process, this don’t always fit the needs of the user. Consider offering a free one hour block of time for qualified companies so that they can get the help they need immediately and experience your services for themselves on the very first touch.

Free Productivity Audit

The work-from-home transition has left many business owners unable to keep a watchful eye on their employees. While this may or may not have an impact on their workforce’s overall productivity, there are many tools available to monitor and report on this type of behavior. Offer your visitors a one week trial of your employee monitoring software so that you can deliver a robust productivity audit containing their actual activity data.

Free Virtual Desktop Demo

With some business owners looking to move their desktops to the cloud, many have very little understanding of how virtual desktops work, how they are managed and what will change for their users as a result. If you sell virtual desktops as part of your cloud services offering, consider creating a standard demo to show off how this technology can help them scale and what they will get as part of your services.

Free WiFi Heatmap

While most MSPs prefer to have their endpoints hardwired with a n ethernet connection, most small businesses still require a WiFi network to operate. This is quite often a point of frustration, especially if these access points are used to connect critical devices such as POS systems, scanners, printers and other IoT devices. Offering your visitors a free WiFi heatmap survey is a great way to get your foot in the door and discover opportunities for projects and services. Since these can be time consuming, you may want to limit your offer to a specific amount of square footage, making anything beyond that point billable.