If you are an established Managed Service Provider (MSP) and landing new clients is your primary or sole means of revenue growth, it’s time to rethink your strategy. Your existing clients—regardless of their size or industry—are evolving as you grow. Technology is advancing quickly, and digital risks are increasing with the adoption of cloud solutions and AI. To remain competitive, your customers must adapt to these technological shifts and periodically upgrade their IT systems and services.
As their MSP and trusted IT advisor, it’s your responsibility to identify gaps and inefficiencies in your clients’ technology infrastructure and recommend improvements—many of which you can deliver.
By understanding their business goals and challenges, you can uncover numerous opportunities to provide additional solutions. To do this consistently, you must integrate evaluation and opportunity-spotting into your routine service delivery processes.
The greatest advantage of upselling is that you’ve already established trust with your clients and proven your ability to deliver. It will take less time and fewer resources to offer additional services to your existing customers than to onboard new ones.
In this article, we explore strategies for identifying client needs, building stronger relationships, and refining your marketing and operational processes to upsell more effectively. The second section focuses specifically on upselling cybersecurity solutions, emphasizing a solution-oriented approach.
Building a Foundation for Successful Upselling
To upsell effectively without overwhelming clients with constant pitches, reassess your communication practices. Introduce regular and informal touchpoints to identify gaps and propose solutions naturally.
Regular Check-ins
Cultivate open, informal communication and demonstrate genuine interest in your clients’ businesses, successes, and challenges—beyond the sales context. Use every interaction as an opportunity to identify problems you can solve.
- Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs): Use QBRs as a structured platform to review performance, discuss goals, and identify areas for improvement.
- Support Engagements: Analyze tech support requests for recurring issues, such as outdated software or hardware, and flag them as opportunities for improvement. Train your tech support team to identify and communicate these opportunities.
- Technical/Engineering Check-ins: Regular on-site visits or remote assessments provide firsthand insights into client environments. Use these opportunities to uncover inefficiencies and recommend solutions.
- Open Dialogue: Encourage informal discussions to build rapport and gain a deeper understanding of client needs and pain points.
- Feedback Mechanisms: Implement surveys and feedback forms to gather insights into client satisfaction and identify improvement areas.
Marketing to Existing Customers
Develop a targeted marketing strategy for your current clients to keep them informed about new services, industry trends, and success stories relevant to their needs.
- Newsletters: Send biweekly or monthly newsletters featuring new or popular services, industry insights, and customer success stories.
- Case Studies: Highlight how your services have solved specific problems for other clients.
- Email Campaigns: Share educational, non-sales-focused content such as cybersecurity tips, tech maintenance advice, and updates on compliance regulations.
- Sector-Specific Messaging: Tailor your communications to specific industries for greater relevance.
By consistently delivering value through your communications, you’ll position yourself as an expert and reliable advisor whom clients will turn to first for solutions.
Offering Cybersecurity Solutions
Once your communication and marketing processes are optimized, focus on actively introducing new services. In this article, we focus on cybersecurity solutions.
Focus on Providing Value
Present cybersecurity solutions by emphasizing their benefits:
- Data Protection: Highlight the risks of data breaches, including noncompliance penalties, lawsuits, brand damage, and operational disruptions.
- Business Continuity: Emphasize how strong cybersecurity measures prevent downtime and revenue loss from cyberattacks.
- Compliance: Explain the importance of adhering to data privacy regulations like HIPAA, PCI DSS, GDPR, and others, noting that compliance is not optional.
- Competitive Advantage: Show how prioritizing cybersecurity can help your clients differentiate themselves and build trust with customers and partners.
- Supply Chain Confidence: Talk to clients about how a strong security posture can strengthen relationships with supply chain partners concerned about cybersecurity risks.
Introducing Security Solutions
When presenting cybersecurity services, avoid technical jargon. Clearly explain the value, deliverables, and benefits in an easy-to-understand way.
- Offer a Free Cyber Risk Assessment: Run scans to uncover security gaps and generate a detailed report as a conversation starter for your managed security offerings.
- Prioritize Actionable Items: Present a clear, prioritized list of recommendations based on the risk assessment report, starting with the most urgent issues.
- Customize Solutions: Tailor your offerings to the client’s specific needs, using insights gathered from past interactions and risk assessments.
- Share Success Stories: Use industry-specific case studies and testimonials to demonstrate the value of your services.
- Highlight Compliance: Connect your services to the client’s compliance requirements, showing how they address key regulatory obligations.
- Beta Testing: Offer a beta version of new services to select clients. This will help build stronger partnerships in the longer term and also allow you to refine the service based on feedback.
Simplifying Purchase Decisions
Make it easy for your clients to adopt your services by addressing their concerns and presenting clear, compelling offers.
Encouraging Action
- Quantify Risk to Show ROI: Use risk quantification tools to calculate the financial impact of a potential cyberattack and demonstrate the value of investing in cybersecurity.
- Industry Comparisons: Use benchmarking tools to compare your client’s security posture to that of industry peers, motivating them to take action.
Making it a No-Brainer
- Start with Essentials: Offer an affordable package that covers essential risk reduction controls, allowing clients to scale up as needed.
- Free Trials: Provide a 30-day trial to help clients experience the benefits of your service firsthand before committing to a long-term managed service agreement.
- Define Deliverables: Clearly outline service deliverables and KPIs, and explain how you’ll report progress.
- Exclusive Discounts: Offer special discounts for existing clients, such as free assessments or discounted subscription rates, to encourage adoption.
Upselling is About Providing Value
Upselling isn’t about pushing more services—it’s about helping your clients grow, adapt, and stay secure in increasingly complex digital environments. By focusing on their needs, maintaining open communication, and offering tailored solutions, you can create a win-win relationship that benefits both your clients and your MSP.
With cybersecurity, the stakes are even higher. By demonstrating the value of your services, connecting them to compliance needs, and simplifying decision-making, you’ll position yourself as a trusted partner who truly understands their challenges.
By integrating upselling into your service delivery, you’ll ensure long-term growth for both your business and your clients.
How CYRISMA can help
CYRISMA combines comprehensive cyber risk management and compliance capabilities in a single platform, enabling MSPs and MSSPs to build strong security foundations for their clients.
Use CYRISMA to:
- Provide a range of vulnerability and data scanning, risk assessment, and risk reduction services
- Track and assess compliance against HIPAA, PCI DSS, NIST 800-53, ISO 27001, the Essential Eight, Cyber Essentials, CIS Controls, NIST CSF, NIST 800-171, and CyberSecure Canada
- Ensure your clients are deploying GenAI securely with Microsoft Copilot Readiness Assessments
- Show clients what an incident could cost them in monetary terms (multiple currencies)
- Offer a 30-day free proof of value to prospects so they experience the benefits of the service before signing up
- Monitor dark web forums and marketplaces for compromised customer data
- Easily build 30, 60 and 90-day action plans and roadmaps using vCISO Action Plan templates
ALL FEATURES AND FUTURE UPGRADES ARE INCLUDED IN CYRISMA’S STANDARD PRICING – NO HIDDEN COSTS
- Read Customer Success Storieshere
- Read what our partners are saying about CYRISMA on G2
View CYRISMA’s complete feature-set