Do you know how much influence your MSP commands in the channel and what your business is doing to extend that influence? In a people-driven, overcrowded business landscape such as managed IT, creating your sphere of influence with customers and vendors, who share your values and business priorities, can serve you as a great differentiation tool.Ironically, the road to building influence in the channel doesn’t start with sharing your product brochures on social media or doing pitches at trade shows. Other than creating meaningful content for your peers, it begins with establishing internal company culture around clients’ needs.
As you cross-sell or upsell to existing customers, refrain from using manipulative tactics and fear-mongering to sell their customers products don’t need. As an influential MSP, you must practice honesty and strong business ethics.
Guest blog courtesy of IT By Design. Read more guest blogs from IT by Design here.
1. Share your Knowledge
One of the best ways to leverage your industry experience is to help educate your peers, whether that be at conferences you organize, through weekly podcasts, during webinars, with CoP, or through mentorship. Whichever route you choose, be intentional to elicit long-term change. To achieve this, create education-focused content.Business blogs, whitepapers, and case studies will help you humanize your MSP brand. The content you create will not always be directly related to your product offering, however, it will always convey your MSP’s authentic and knowledgeable voice to industry stakeholders.2. Futureproof your Business with Innovation
Introduce innovation in everything you do. Start with risk-mitigating technologies, business practices, and strategies that directly improve your CSAT score.It is also important to recognize your manpower’s role to sustain your ability to continuously innovate and influence. So, to support organization-wide innovation drive, encourage your engineers to pursue as many certifications in emerging technologies as possible. As a supporter of this innovation, pay for or reimburse any costs it takes for your engineers to continue their professional education to become domain experts. Also, get the team trained by industry experts in continuous learning sessions so they can be on top of their game.3. Customize as Much as Possible
Though with little differentiation in the business model, every MSP is different. You as an influential business must take time to realize and actualize this. Work with your sales team to understand each prospect’s business profiles and extend tailored IT services. In a business landscape where all products and services look like clones of one another, your ability to customize for each client will only help you add to your influence.As you cross-sell or upsell to existing customers, refrain from using manipulative tactics and fear-mongering to sell their customers products don’t need. As an influential MSP, you must practice honesty and strong business ethics.
