Your Techs Are Not Selling, and That’s Okay
If you’ve ever said “our techs just need to sell more,” you’re not alone — but you’re also not solving the right problem.
MSP owners are constantly pulled between delivering great service and growing revenue. In that tension, a common idea emerges: “We’ll just train the techs to upsell.”
But here’s the truth:
Your techs aren’t selling. They probably won’t. And that’s totally okay.
Here’s why, and what to do instead.
Why Techs Struggle to Sell
Let’s break this down. It’s not laziness or lack of intelligence, It’s a misalignment of roles, incentives, and psychology:
Techs are wired to solve, not persuade. Their mindset is “get it working,” not “increase revenue per user.”
They don’t want to jeopardize trust. Selling feels like “going off script” or putting their client relationship at risk.
They’re not trained for sales conversations. Asking open-ended questions, identifying business pain, and leading a prospect to a solution? That’s a whole different skill set.
If you’ve tried to duct-tape sales training onto a technical role, you already know how little ROI that usually returns.
What Not to Do
Don’t assign quota to engineers. It creates stress, resentment, and often worse outcomes for clients.
Don’t hand them a script and say, “Just ask if they need anything else.”
Don’t mistake technical suggestions (“You could upgrade your firewall”) for business value conversations (“Here’s how we reduce your risk profile to win new clients”).
What to Do Instead
1. Redesign Your Role Expectations
Let techs do what they’re great at: identifying needs and opportunities.
But put the sales responsibility on someone else — even if it’s fractional.
Shift the burden from:
“Techs need to sell.”
To:
“Techs need to identify opportunity. Sales needs to close it.”
Give them a simple handoff process:
A checklist or trigger phrase (“client frustrated with downtime”)
A place to log it (ticket tag, CRM note)
A person to send it to (vCRO, account manager, owner)
2. Deploy a vCRO or Account Manager
If you’re not ready to hire a full-time sales rep, bring in fractional sales leadership (like Ohmont’s vCRO service) to own:
Discovery and scoping
Pricing and proposal strategy
Upsell/cross-sell motion
Forecasting and pipeline accountability
This frees your team to focus on what they do best while building a system that scales beyond you.
3. Systematize the Sales Process
Techs don’t need to become salespeople. But you do need a repeatable system where:
Opportunities are identified and logged
Follow-up is timely and professional
Proposals are aligned with both client pain and your business model
No opportunity is lost in the shuffle
We help MSPs build that structure in just a few weeks — without hiring a full-time sales team.
Final Thoughts
Stop trying to turn your techs into something they’re not.
Instead, build a bridge between what they notice and what your business needs.
That’s the vCRO model.
That’s how you unlock growth without burning out your team.