In this episode of MSP Founders Den, we talk about your role in deciding your approach to continue growing your business, are you being strategic or are you running more tactically? We share important lessons we have learned through our years to improve your speech and pitch the idea to potential customers.
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Hey everyone! This is Jhovanny Rodriguez, co-founder of both an award-winning MSP, as well as a Voice Services Company, that serves the channel. Today we're talking about being strategic versus tactical as an MSP owner I talk to many MSPs by phone or at events and the topic is MSPs are looking at growing and adding revenue, so we've created this video blog to share some of our own experiences in growing in MSP.
This is a big challenge I think any startup MSP would tell you that one of the most difficult transitions that they have is going from being very tactical, being the engineer, being the help desk, and doing the day-to-day to taking a more strategic position.
That is difficult because the work has to be done and many times it feels like you can't step out of your duties. So, it quickly becomes the typical: “what came first the chicken or the egg situation” because you have to hire more people so then you can step out but you need to step out to focus on the company to add more people and it becomes a complex situation.
We went through the same thing early on, we went through all the difficulties and financial constraints and that does not allow you to say, “I'm just going to hire somebody because I need him or her and I’m going to wait six months for that to work out”. Well, we talked to many partners that are in that same dilemma to also get their thoughts and in this quick video I gather their opinions and my own to share with you know what are some of those things that we have done to overcome this.
I could say for myself that the first two years of the MSP were challenging. And I would say that I hope somebody would have given us some advice at that point. Those first two years we worked seven days a week and we were technical staff Monday to Friday, nine to six; and then we did all of our billing and all the things at night and on weekends. I remember taking time to figure out new technologies new products and services that our customers needed and that happened to be done on the weekends.
So we're going to show you some things that looking back I feel we could have done differently and we learned over the years.
These are both while running an MSP and now as a voice provider through the channel.
Lesson #1 - Leverage Partnerships
The first one is that I would leverage more partnerships and vendor relationships that could help me amplify my business. There is another video blog where we talk about going deep with your vendors and you can read it here. The reality is that if you don't have any marketing material or lead generation engines; if you get close to a few of your vendors and you leverage their lead generation, they might be getting their certifications and you might be able to get some leads coming in your way but also leverage their marketing material. To check on the full video blog about Leveraging your Partnerships go here, please.
- Lesson #2 Outsourced Services
One of the biggest things that we felt was an impediment to our growth and an impediment to us stepping back was the fact that we were servicing customers and answering phones at the same time as we did not have the funds to actually go in and build a true help desk.
So, we roughed it out but today there are companies out there that you can outsource certain pieces of your business; whether you want to do that permanently or you want to do that until you are able to build your own. I have a partner in mind that I have been mentoring or coaching, however, you want to look at it and that is one of the next steps.
This particular person has a couple of people that are working part-time and he is the help-desk guy, the biller, the salesperson, he's the network engineer, and the server management person and he can't get out. He is just trapped there and he has not been able to take a vacation in a year.
So my advice is to bring in an outsourced help desk service. It will help you monitor and remediate your first-level support, they will speak to your customer directly.
This will affect the response time on their requests and even if you still need to do some fieldwork, the outsourcing service will be probably a fraction of that full-time person that you need to hire. In addition, it would allow you to go do more sales and would allow you to spend more time streamlining some of your services.
Lesson #3 - Segment your Business
Segment your business into logical areas. Establish areas where you must have an in-house presence and areas that you could outsource whether permanent or temporary. Now you are able to go after businesses or customers that you would not be able to touch because you were not ready or did not have a physical presence.
And this goes to the break-fix providers as well, as they're looking to make that transition from a break-fix provider to a true MSP Business. And the differentiation is that you cannot build at the MSP level if you don't have all the right components.
So, put in all those components, get the customers, get some contracts signed and make sure that you prepare the back end. You will be able to successfully transition to an MSP by continuing to do that and you will be able to step back and manage the business. Observe it all, take a deep look and measure through some type of scorecard and then stuff up and bring back in what makes sense for you.