The case for a technical vCIO
Walk into ten different MSPs, and you’ll find ten different ideas of what a vCIO should be. Some lean sales. Some lean account management. Some lean business consultant. And there’s a real debate in our industry about which profile is right. I believe a vCIO needs to be deeply technical. What the client actually wants […]
Who should see your operational metrics
Here’s a mistake I see MSPs make all the time. They finally get a meeting with the CEO or owner, the person who signed the contract, and they spend it walking through ticket volumes, resolution times, and SLA performance. Not much comes from a meeting like that. Except the executive probably deciding not to sit […]
Stop using the past to prove your value
Many MSPs have the same reflex when it comes time to prove they’re worth the money. They reach for what they’ve already done. Tickets closed. Uptime delivered. Problems solved. Projects completed. I get it. It feels like the safest ground we have. It’s also the weakest case you can make. Nobody bought your MSP for what […]
The one meeting that gets executives back in the room
Here’s a pattern I see at almost every MSP, including ours for years. You sign a new client. The CEO is in the room. You sold them a vision of the future: better technology, fewer problems, IT that supports where the business is going. They’re excited. They sign. And then you hardly ever see them […]
If you’re not doing strategic planning with your clients, start here
I meet MSPs all the time, and so many of them are in the exact same place. They’re not doing real strategic planning with their clients. Maybe they meet some of them somewhat regularly, but rarely all of them, and rarely with any real structure. It’s the thing they know they should be doing, but […]
Your MSP doesn’t have a sales problem. You’re thinking about growth wrong.
Most MSPs trying to grow are doing it backwards. They invest in sales. They outsource lead gen to firms that book meetings for them. They hire marketing agencies. They build out a sales team. All of that is great. But it’s almost never the first move. The first step is to reduce your churn as […]
What your co-managed clients actually want
In managed services, we sell the cake, not the ingredients. The client wants peace of mind and a business that runs. They don’t want to hear about which EDR we picked or why. Co-managed is the opposite. Your point of contact is technical. They care deeply about the ingredients. They want to know your stack. They […]
5 signs your vCIO services aren’t working
Meetings are happening. Roadmaps exist. Nobody is complaining. But going through the motions and delivering value are not the same thing. Here are five signs of issues worth looking into: 1. Your QBRs are about tickets and uptime QBRs aren’t the problem. Operational meetings have their place. The problem is when that’s the only conversation […]
A client just got acquired by PE. Here’s what we did.
Last week it happened to us in our MSP. A client we’ve had for years got acquired by a private equity firm. Funny enough, we did a webinar on exactly this topic two weeks ago. I followed my own advice, and I want to share what that looked like in practice. What happened Our client […]
Your client’s point of contact just changed. Do you have a process or are you winging it?
Most MSPs don’t. We didn’t either, for a long time. We winged it. Sometimes it went fine. Sometimes it didn’t. Eventually we realized that winging it on something this important wasn’t acceptable, so we built a process. Your operational POC is the person you interact with most. The office manager, the controller, the executive assistant, […]
