You spent your life building this business from the ground up. Your company’s equity is filled with blood and sweat from the many times you ate hot dogs and beans so your employees could get paid. It may also be your retirement plan, and you want proper compensation.
Citing statistics that predict the world population (currently at 7.7 billion) leveling off at around 11 billion by 2100, ConnectWise president Arnie Bellini called on the IT channel to play a lead role in the global challenges associated with overpopulation at his annual IT Nation Connect conference in Orlando last week.
I just returned from the Ingram Micro ONE event in Washington, DC and here’s what I liked most about it. If I’ve heard one vendor or distributor exec implore a crowd of their VAR and MSP customers to do something innovative, something non-traditional, with their clients, I’ve heard a million.
If Geek Squad is a nursery school for MSPs, its founder Robert Stephens, is the headmaster. I sat down with Stephens in Phoenix last week at the SolarWinds Empower user conference. Among many interesting points in our conversation were exchanges about IT services marketing and pricing.
In February 2017, CIO Solutions lost a big account. So big, in fact, that it accounted for 40 percent of the MSP’s revenue. This isn’t a mom and pop shop IT Services provider we’re talking about – the account’s revenue brought in millions of dollars annually. Fast forward to September 2018, and CIO Solutions is gracing the cover of Channel Executive magazine. The company not only rebounded – it completed a successful acquisition and is in a strong position for future growth. We couldn’t fit this side story in the magazine, so instead we’re sharing the lessons learned from loss of a large customer in a web-exclusive feature.
The work my friend and colleague Abby Sorensen put into the IT Channel is paying dividends even after she shifted her focus to the greater software business community. Last week at its RetailNOW event, the Retail Solutions Providers Association’s Women-to-Women (W2W) Committee named her its 2018 Leader Of The Year. Committee Chair and business owner Kelli Stewart, owner/operations manager at Advanced Data Systems, bestowed the honors from the mainstage.
The less stress, the more success. It’s that simple, and yet statistics show it’s also incredibly difficult for businesses to achieve. The American Institute of Stress reports that job stress is the biggest source of stress for Americans, and outcomes include heart attack, hypertension and worse. 90% of Americans report some stress on the job, and 40% report extreme stress. On the other side of the border, one in four Canadians cite stress as the reason for leaving their job. If you run a business, managing stress matters.
Today’s managed services practices are using increasing levels of automation to succeed. Whether it’s remote monitoring and management (RMM), professional services automation (PSA), or something else, automation allows the MSP to deliver consistent, efficient services at a predictable price for customers.
MSPs looking for a way in with CIOs should use integration opportunities as a conversation starter. Simply put, integration is one of the CIO’s biggest headaches: as businesses increase their cloud investments and move forward with digital transformation efforts, they are finding that getting everything to work together is a massive undertaking.
For MSPs, the traditional approach to cybersecurity focuses on defense and prevention, but as cybercriminals get bolder and more sophisticated, that’s no longer enough. What’s needed is a proactive security posture that MSPs can enforce with their clients using these nine best practices.
When MSPs seek out new tools and capabilities to add to their portfolio of managed services, they shouldn’t overlook the opportunity to benefit from the advice of their current vendors. Many, from my experience, still don’t. This is a marketplace small enough that many of us know one another very, very well. Successful vendors inevitably learn the lay of the land and get to know their neighbors, with most participating at the same annual MSP events around the country (which, even before a expo hall cocktail, have collegial atmospheres). Because of this, they usually possess a particularly deep knowledge of who operates out of the same wheelhouse as their own, but also – importantly – those vendors that offer adjacent and complementary solutions that will save MSPs (and their clients) headache down the road.
Reselling Cloud PBX is never an easy task, but you should not let that hold you back from adding it to your portfolio of managed services. Now is the perfect time to dive right into the lucrative telecom market. Every Business Needs a PBX and we can help you provide your clients with an up-to-date PBX system that fits their needs.
Beginning around 2007, traditional endpoint security was becoming ineffective. Stopping infections was based around finding a user with an infection (patient zero), creating a detection signature (inoculation) and then updating every device to stop any further infections (eradication). The ineffectiveness was a direct result of the volume, variety, and velocity of infections. These factors completely overwhelmed the ‘patient zero’ approach. There were simply too many patients and not enough inoculations.
As the threat landscape continues to grow, regulatory requirements multiply, and CEOs and executive boards become more aware of the business impact of security incidents, most organizations are feeling an urgency to strengthen their cybersecurity efforts. This increased awareness is especially visible in small and midsized businesses (SMBs) that have traditionally underestimated the impact of cybersecurity threats to their organizations. Even so, SMBs are still failing to fully recognize and appreciate the risks, threats and vulnerabilities that are targeting their organizations.
Taylor Business Group is an executive coaching and peer group firm that focuses on IT Solution Providers and Copier Dealers. Founded in 2001, Taylor has brought efficiencies and higher profits to IT Solution Providers through a focused effort in delivering best practices to the Service Provider and Copier Dealer's service, sales and administrative functions.
HTG is an international consulting, coaching and peer group organization that cultivates success by igniting personal, leadership, business and legacy transformation. Members navigate their journey with world-class HTG consultants and facilitators who value sharing wisdom, providing accountability and building meaningful relationships, Igniting Transformation™ every step of the way. HTG invites you to explore the program that suits you best, and apply today to begin experiencing The HTG Way.
The ASCII Group is a vibrant community of independent MSPs, VARS and solution providers in North America. The organization offers members leveraged purchasing programs, education and training, knowledge sharing among peers, discounts on business services, and more. Founded in 1984 by Alan Weinberger, ASCII is the oldest and largest group of independent IT solution providers, integrators and VARS in the world.
CloudBerry Lab™ is a vendor for CloudBerry Backup, a leading cross-platform cloud backup and disaster recovery solution integrated with major public cloud services, such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform, and almost every S3-compatible or OpenStack based cloud storage service.
Webroot delivers intelligent cybersecurity for endpoint, mobile and web to channel partners, consumers, businesses, and enterprises worldwide. Powered by its BrightCloud® collective threat intelligence network, Webroot protects the internet of everything. Our cloud-based threat detection, high performance, lightweight agents, and single, web-based point of control have changed the way businesses think about protecting mobile devices, PCs and servers. Named a ‘Visionary’ in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Protection Platforms, Webroot’s smarter approach to security is why companies including Cisco, F5 Networks, GateProtect, HP, Microsoft, Palo Alto Networks, Proofpoint, RSA and others choose our solutions for advanced threat protection for their security products and services.
Datto protects business data and provides secure connectivity for tens of thousands of the world's fastest growing companies. Datto's Total Data Protection solutions deliver uninterrupted access to business data on site, in transit and in the cloud. Thousands of IT service providers globally rely on Datto's combination of pioneering technology and dedicated services to ensure businesses are always on, no matter what. Datto is headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut and has offices in Rochester, Boston, Portland, Toronto, London, Singapore and Sydney. Learn more at www.datto.com.
You can’t securely manage what you don’t know exists. It’s the nature of shadow IT that you’re probably unaware of the extent to which your clients rely on unauthorized apps, devices or other technologies. Nonetheless, it’s this separation between the technology you audit and approve, and the tech that you likely don’t know about, that creates a dangerous vulnerability for cyber attacks to take place.
Home services companies have dispatchers who take calls and assign them, techs who service the calls, and support personnel who order parts, keep them stocked, and handle financials. Sounds familiar, right? These companies are also time sensitive and customer loyalty is thin. So, when selling to these businesses, keep in mind they don’t have the stickiness we do with our clients so there are some things you will need to cover with them and come to mutual understandings.
To run a successful IT company, you should pay specific attention to your marketing strategy and the means of attracting new leads to your business. In this article, we will review the main marketing spheres in which every MSP should be engaged.
If you’ve decided to start a managed service provider practice you may ask yourself: how do I sell my managed services to my prospects? You might be a very good technical specialist, but if you have no idea of how the sales process works it may be very difficult for you to bring your business to any significant level of profitability. According to a survey conducted by CloudBerry Lab in 2018, the most challenging aspect of the MSP business still is finding new clients and turning prospects into deals.
Take control of the internet and grow your bottom line.
