IT Services Cold Call Script

Opener

Hi [first name], it's [your name] at [company]. We're an IT services firm, and I'd guess you have someone handling IT already, so I'm not calling to replace them. I'm calling because [specific trigger] is affecting [their type of business] in [area], and I have one question about how yours is set up. Forty seconds?

Every business has someone for IT; pre-empting that objection removes it. A specific trigger, such as an end-of-support date or a compliance deadline, makes the call timely.

Reason for the call

[Trigger: Windows Server 2016 goes out of support in [month]; your cyber insurance renewal will ask about MFA and backups; a business two streets over just lost three days to ransomware]. We've been working with [number] [industry] businesses in [area] on exactly that, and most of them didn't know it applied to them until someone asked.

Concrete and local. An end-of-support date or an insurance requirement is verifiable and non-salesy, and a nearby incident makes the risk feel real rather than theoretical.

Value hook

What we do is [one plain sentence: manage your IT so you don't have to think about it; handle after-hours and security so your internal team can focus on projects]. For [reference client], a [industry] business with about [number] people, that meant [specific result: no unplanned downtime in 18 months, passing a cyber insurance audit, a 40-minute average ticket response]. I can put you in touch with them.

A reference client of similar size and industry, with a concrete operational result, is what makes an MSP believable. Owners call references; have one ready.

Qualifying question

Can I ask how IT is handled today: an employee, an outside person, or a company? And when something breaks at 7pm on a Friday, who do you call?

The Friday-evening question exposes the gap in almost every small-business IT setup. The owner's answer is usually a pause, and the pause is the opening.

Handling the first pushback

That's fair, and if your current person is responsive and you've never had a bad week, you don't need to change anything. The businesses that call us are the ones that had the bad week: the server died, the backup hadn't run in months, and the IT guy was on holiday. I'd rather you find out whether your backups actually restore before that week than after. Would a free check of that one thing be worth 30 minutes?

'We have a guy' is the pushback. Do not attack the guy; name the scenario where a one-person setup fails, and offer a small, specific check that the guy probably has not done.

Close

Here's the low-risk version: 30 minutes on site or on a call, I ask about your setup, I check [backups / MFA / patch status], and I give you a one-page summary of what's fine and what isn't. No proposal unless you ask for one. Is [day] morning or [day] afternoon easier for you?

A free, bounded assessment with a written output is the standard MSP first step, and it works because the owner gets something useful even if they never buy.

"We already have an IT guy and he is great."

Then keep him. Seriously, a good IT person is hard to find. The one question I'd ask is what happens when he's on holiday or sick, or if he moves on. Most of our clients came to us after that exact week. If you'd like, I can do a free check of your backups and security so you've got a second set of eyes, and he keeps doing everything else.

"We are too small to need managed IT."

Possibly, and I'll tell you if that's the case. The threshold usually isn't size, it's whether you have something that can't go down: a system you invoice from, a database, email. If a day without it would cost you more than a month of service, you're big enough. If it wouldn't, you're not, and I'll say so.

"Our in-house IT team can handle it."

I'm sure they can, and I'm not calling to replace them. Most IT teams your size are running at capacity, and the thing that slips is [after-hours coverage, patching, documentation, the helpdesk queue]. We take that piece so your team can do the projects they're actually there for. Would it be worth a conversation with your IT lead about which piece they'd most like off their plate?

"Managed services are too expensive for what we get."

They can be, if the contract covers things you don't use. What I'd suggest is you compare the monthly fee to what a day of downtime costs you in lost billing and staff time, and to what you're paying your current person for break-fix. Most owners find that the fixed fee is cheaper than the last emergency, and I'll show you the maths on the call.