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Six Strategies to Becoming a Successful MSP
March 2008
Many companies seem to be jumping on the bandwagon to offer managed services. But managed services is more than the latest technology buzzword. And offering managed services involves more than simply monitoring a customer’s information technology (IT) department.
Jeff Kaplan, managing director, Wellesley, Mass.-based THINKstrategies Inc., asserts that being an effective managed services provider (MSP) is a major responsibility. Founded in 2001, THINKstrategies is an independent strategic consulting company focused specifically on the shift in the technology industry from a product-centric orientation to a services-driven business. Kaplan outlines six strategies needed to become a successful MSP.
Strategy #1: Be Proactive
Many MSPs remotely monitor the customer’s environment and
notify the customer of any problems. In this scenario, it’s
the customer’s responsibility to fix the problem. This
isn’t enough, according to Kaplan. “What customers
really want is someone to identify problems and fix them. Even
better is to identify problems before they become real problems
and fix them before they disrupt a customer’s operations,” he
said. “Proactive management is a key part of what they
deliver.”
Strategy #2: Have the Right Technology
Because a proactive MSP is assuming 24-hour responsibility for
some portion of its customers’ IT environments, it’s
important that an MSP has the right technology in place to
reliably deliver the services at the agreed upon levels. “The
right technology for properly monitoring customers remotely
should be easy to deploy, place limited bandwidth requirements
on the customers’ networks, permit automated updates
and produce meaningful activity reports that can help the MSP
better manage their customers’ operations,” Kaplan
said.
Strategy #3: Have the Right Tech Support
Proactive MSPs need employees with different skills than traditional
reseller companies. “Instead of the traditional tech
people who are firefighters who respond to problems and enjoy
going onsite to fix them, they need tech support people who
are comfortable continuously monitoring customer operations
remotely and identifying problems before they manifest themselves
and fixing them before anyone appreciates the problem exists
in the first place,” Kaplan explained. “It’s
a different kind of personality.”
Strategy #4: Have the Right Salespeople
Likewise, the sales process and salespeople for a managed service
are different from that of a traditional reseller. Instead
of selling a product’s value or features, they’re
selling the business benefits of a service, which is more like
selling an insurance policy.
Sometimes staff can be trained from within to fit into the proactive managed services organization, but often channel organizations find they’ve had to change the bulk of their staff when they make the shift from traditional reseller businesses, according to Kaplan.
Strategy #5: Sell to the Right Customer
The end customer is also different. Traditional resellers sell
to the IT department, offering IT staff products and technologies
to help them do their jobs better. MSPs, on the other hand,
have to convince the IT person that it makes sense to relinquish
some of the job to the MSP or the MSP must sell to the business
decision-maker.
To make this kind of sale requires that the MSP demonstrate its value to the customer. That value can include how it can produce greater uptime and reliability, better security, better utilization from their current systems and better plan for future growth. “And you should be able to do this if you were properly monitoring their systems--you should be able to quantify your value and become more of a trusted advisor than simply a technology supplier,” Kaplan said.
If an MSP finds itself selling to the IT staff, the best tactic, according to Kaplan, is to show them how the managed service can help make them a hero, helping them get off the treadmill of reacting to problems and worrying about keeping things up and running. “Instead the IT staff can play a more positive role in supporting and achieving the business’ objectives,” he added.
Strategy #6: Sell to the Right-Sized Customer
While many believe that the small and medium business (SMB) audience
is the sweet spot for MSPs, Kaplan refutes this idea. According
to his research, many times the small companies have the greatest
resistance to managed services because their IT staffs feel
threatened by the MSP. Instead, he says, large-scale enterprises
offer the greatest promise because their IT staffs are used
to using third parties to augment their capabilities. “That
doesn’t mean that there aren’t good opportunities
among SMBs, but you have to understand the obstacles.”
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