If you’re a managed service provider looking to take your business to the next level in 2017, keep reading. After sitting down with successful MSPs, we found that they surpass competitors by practicing a few different habits. These include, clearly defining their business offering, attracting the right customers, and building strategic pricing models. Below are some of their secrets to success and tips to help you start them at your own MSP.
Tips to win more business and become a trusted MSP:
1. Be the go-to guy: For MSPs, it’s important to define exactly what your business does (i.e. the services in which you specialize) that gives you the edge over competitors in your space. Communicating your business value to potential customers is crucial to your success. One effective way to differentiate yourself from other IT providers is to develop a high level of expertise in a specific industries or technologies. For example, an MSP may focus on servicing SMBs in Healthcare and Finance or they could specialize in a specific service or technology (i.e. backup and disaster recovery).
2. Be choosy about clients: Many new IT service providers take whatever work they can get. This makes sense when you are just starting out, but as your business grows it is important to be more selective about your customers. Customers who are the right fit be easier to manage down the road, and both parties will benefit. The first step: identify your ideal client. This will be dictated in part by your specific areas of expertise, but there are additional factors to weigh.
3. Build Customer Trust: For IT service providers, building customer trust is essential to success. Their livelihood relies on the private technology and data you are accessing and protecting. Offering customers impartial advice about technology will help you become their trusted advisor. Obviously, you need to generate revenue and make profits, but that doesn’t equate to selling clients the most expensive products. It’s more important to recommend technology that helps them succeed regardless of the cost. Giving customers the right tools along with top-notch tech support, builds trust and ensures a long-lasting business relationship.
4. Standardize technology offerings: Standardization allows you to develop expertise on technologies that you use—reducing the time and effort necessary to deploy and manage them. This will mean different things to different IT providers. For example, some might opt to use technology from a single vendor to deliver networking services. Your point of contact will always be the same IT vendor, and this leads to a more streamlined technical support experience for both you and your end user.
5. Price for profit: Start by evaluating your own business’ costs. One example, recurring costs for the technologies you use to deliver services to your customers. Then, look at the rest of your expenses on a monthly basis. Your fees should be based on those numbers.
Together, the five habits above will help you build technical expertise, become a trusted advisor, and grow your revenue. For additional quick and easy tips on stepping up your game, check out Datto's blog.