A mentor of mine once said, “When selling a product or service, business owners are looking for two things: How does it make me money? Or, how does it save me money?” That was good advice then, but anyone who has spent time in sales knows simply providing something that satisfies one or both of those criteria doesn’t guarantee the sale.
I spent a few days in Dallas last week with my friends at HTG. I try to attend as many of the group’s quarterly meetings as I can, because there’s no better place to become immersed in the MSP community. Honest and transparent conversations with the leaders of operationally mature—and actively maturing—managed services businesses are what direct our MSP Insights and Channel Executive editorial content.
There’s been no shortage of press about the IT labor situation in India. In case you haven’t been following, here’s a quick summation. The country’s outsourced IT shops are like our brick-and-mortar stores. There are too many of them. They’re occupied by too many employees for the times. They both face threats posed by automation and Amazon, respectively, nemeses whose names are nearly synonymous.
As VAR and MSP sales and marketing organizations catch the buyer persona buzz, are client personas and user experiences being overlooked?
The PCI Security Standards Council’s announcement of plans to strategically drive its QIR (Qualified Integrators and Resellers) program deeper into the SMB retail market is by most counts a positive thing for the industry. For the greater good of data security, it’s hard to muster a qualm about moves like these. It’s a little easier to be annoyed by these changes if you’ve been going out of your way to differentiate your business via a payment security consultancy.
When James Laszko founded Mythos Technology in 2010 he likely didn’t expect he’d be able to afford to fire the lowest performing 20 percent of his customers in 2018. But that’s exactly what he has set out to do this year. You can read more about his customer rightsizing initiative in the May 2018 issue of Channel Executive magazine. In the meantime, there is another side to the Mythos story: how to find the customers who are the right fit so they won’t end up on the chopping block a few years down the road.
It may be easier in the short-term for an MSP to standardize on one cloud provider, but a multi-cloud sales strategy is the more lucrative option in the long run.
Doug Grimm sat down with MSPinsights and VARinsights to talk about the biggest tech opportunity for MSPs and VARs.
Jim Hocking sat down with MSPinsights to talk about MSP pricing and the most common mistake he sees MSPs make when it comes to pricing their services.
Dreading your company’s annual kick-off because you can’t really show how your channel is performing – and suffering from a lack of ideas on how to truly accelerate your indirect revenue? You’re not alone. These are common symptoms of having selected the wrong channel management solution.
When IT service providers become MSPs, the transition isn’t always easy. It requires a fundamental change in the way business is done. What you sell—and what you shouldn’t sell—needs to be clearly considered if success is part of your plan.
Every MSP should be looking for additional services that are easy to setup, simple to manage, achieve predictable results, and generate consistent revenue. Backup-as-a-Service is one of the logical “next steps” for every MSP that is already responsible for the care of their customer’s most critical systems. Some simply haven’t made the jump yet (e.g. the customer is still managing their own backups), while others just haven’t moved their management of backups to a recurring service model.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud computing resources, networking facilities, and multi-user applications reduce the amount of financial and business resources spent maintaining your business IT infrastructure. Off-site cloud storage further protects your data against disaster. This whitepaper reviews best practices for backup and disaster recovery on the AWS Cloud.
Through the digital transformation of businesses – moving from bricks and mortal, 9-to-5 businesses to ones that are available anytime, anywhere – has required a shift in the way organizations protect their data. Traditional backup storage models of on-premises tape and disk have given way to both cloud and hybrid-cloud backup storage, providing greater availability and accessibility of secure, protected data.
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.
| ConnectWise is the leading business management solution designed exclusively for technology organizations, such as IT solution providers, MSPs, software companies, hardware/software resellers, and System Integrators. |
SolarWinds® MSP delivers comprehensive, scalable IT service management solutions to empower MSPs of every size and scale worldwide to create highly efficient and profitable businesses that drive a measurable competitive advantage.
IT Glue is an award-winning documentation platform that allows for efficient storage and retrieval of all the documentation you need to help your MSP run better. By integrating PSA and RMM data, we can help increase your efficiency, and reduce onboarding times by even more. By eliminating wasted time from your business, IT Glue gives you more time to focus on what matters - growing your business.
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.
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.
GDPR represents a massive paradigm shift for global businesses. Every organization that handles data belonging to European residents must now follow strict security guidelines and businesses are now subject to hefty fines if data breaches are not disclosed. Organizations around the world have been busy preparing to comply with these new regulations, but many internet users are unaware of how GDPR will impact them. While this new oversight enhances user privacy protection, its implementation also opens the door for GDPR-specific cyber threats.
In the past, security awareness training for user education—i.e. empowering users to make more savvy IT decisions in their daily routines—was considered a “nice to have,” not a necessity. The decision to adopt user education was typically passed over because of budget, lack of in-house expertise, and the general lack of availability of high-quality, low-cost, computer-based training. In particular, small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) have suffered from these types of constraints, compared to larger, more resource rich organizations.
Cyberattacks are on the rise, with UK firms being hit, on average, by over 230,000 attacksin 2017. Managed service providers (MSPs) need to make security a priority in 2018, or they will risk souring their relationships with clients. By following 3 simple MSP best practices consisting of user education, backup and recovery, and patch management, your MSP can enhance security, mitigate overall client risk, and grow revenue.
A mentor of mine once said, “When selling a product or service, business owners are looking for two things: How does it make me money? Or, how does it save me money?” That was good advice then, but anyone who has spent time in sales knows simply providing something that satisfies one or both of those criteria doesn’t guarantee the sale.
As a business owner, being able to envision your company’s big picture is crucial. But, realistically, how much time during your hectic day do you truly have to dedicate to understanding every detail that impacts this picture? If your answer is along the lines of, “not much” or “I wish I had more time” – you are not alone. Thankfully, ConnectWise Sell™ has a solution.
