If you’re reading this, we’re going to assume you are curious about what the CloudRadial Collective has to say about how MSPs can scale successfully. But first, you might be asking who or what is the CloudRadial Collective. Wonder no more…
The CloudRadial Collective is a fun group of curious individuals from CloudRadial’s internal team. We pick interesting topics that are relevant to the MSP industry, break them down, collect our point of view (hence Collective), and then share those POVs publicly.
We recently read an article about how MSPs could scale successfully. It was a good read (link at the end of this blog) and here is CloudRadial’s Collective two-point POV on this piece 😉.
1. We give to Tip # 4: Verify user demand:
While this article is primarily focused on security, the most important takeaway in the article from the CloudRadial Collective point of view comes from Tip 4, where Barracuda MSP Chief Revenue Officer Michael Hanauer stated “If you start at the customer and work your way back, you can build your services to solve customer problems, rather than build services that you think your customers will want.” We fully agree with that statement, Ricky Cecchini, VP of Product Strategy at CloudRadial adds: “ I would really put a heavy emphasis on that tip #4: verify user demand.”
The team does not disagree. Overall this statement applies to each of the other tips, too. If you consider your clients first, it will help you assess current and future resources, because you’ll know exactly what to plan for. If you start with your client's perspective, you can thrive in training and retention, verify user demand, partner selection, and the development of a strategic plan.
This is essentially the exact same message that CloudRadial has been putting forth since the beginning. In Ricky’s words, “Thousands of dollars buying training, doing all this for no reason, right? So the point that it makes is basically to have a conversation, see if it's something people are willing to pay for.” If you want to resolve overspending on security, on backup, or on any other features or integrations, start by figuring out what your clients really want from you, their MSP. Furthermore, it’s important to determine whether they are willing to pay for it. Without having this information, there is a good chance that you build tools for your clients that they aren’t interested in and don’t want to pay for.
2. We give to Tip #5: Communicate with others:
The CloudRadial Collective encourages MSPs to talk to one another and leverage lessons they each have learned on their path to starting and evolving. Questions like "What tools are you guys using? What works with your portal? What doesn't work with your portal?". The idea of tool cohesion is more important than ever before because a lot of people are starting to realize that just because you bought 50 billion different tools to do stuff doesn't mean anything if they don't really live in an ecosystem.
We believe in having open communication with your peers. These can lead to really important insights on how to scale your MSP. You might be considering adding new services (after validating demand) or investing in new software that will help the team be more efficient but you’re on the fence about charging more. You should charge more, this will help you scale. Talking to others to understand how they did it will give you clarity on how to move forward and help you build out your plan to scale.
Conclusion
Verify demand, talk to others and maintain a “client-first” approach. This is core to CloudRadial and how we scale for growth and continue to support our growing MSP partner base. At the end of the day, you can’t scale without healthy client engagement. If you don’t address your client engagement maturity challenges, then assessing demand for services and peer conversations will be moot. Our strong POV is: Starting with the client is of utmost importance. Doing so ensures the same success as all of the other points mentioned in the article in cultivating a healthy relationship between an MSP and its client. Check out the original Channel Insider article here.
About CloudRadial:
We exist to help MSPs grow. CloudRadial’s Client Services Automation platform transforms the way MSPs and IT teams engage, collaborate, and advise their clients and end-users. It consolidates the IT touch points of ticketing, reporting, training, planning, and account management into a shared portal where clients and IT collaborate to resolve problems, understand issues, add new services, and plan future opportunities
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