The MSP environment is getting more competitive, and to grow market share, some MSPs have become larger. More clients, more revenue, more clout. There are some clear advantages to being a big, ambitious player in the technology sector. If you’re interested in becoming one of those bigger MSPs, we’ve put together some insights and revealed a few secrets to help you get there.
Step 1: Get more time in the day
Big MSPs don’t spend their time on manual work or low-return repetitive sales motions. They focus their efforts on increasing the MRR they derive from every client, and that means making the time to engage with clients in more productive, value-oriented ways. Because there’s only so much time in the day, the first thing you need to do is to make more time available for truly important activities. But you don’t get more time just by adding more people to the equation. Instead, you need to apply technology in the right places.
- Leverage automations that enable you to strip away the manual work
- Push repetitive tasks into a purpose-built self-service portal
- Transform workflows that are outdated or unproductive into revenue-generating powerhouses
- Tapping into technology these individual sub-steps are a good upgrade, but by putting them all together they make a proven strategy to create more time for yourself as an MSP.
Step 2: Use your newfound time better
Now you need to take the time you freed up in Step 1 and use it in more productive ways. That means revamping some processes as well as changing your mindset.
Transform the QBR.
By reconstructing traditional quarterly lookbacks and turning them into smarter QBRs, you can identify the areas of productivity and growth within your clients’ organizations that you can really impact. You’ll be able to understand each customer’s goals and pain points. With that insight, you can then identify much higher-margin opportunities inside that company. The self-service portal is a core element in making your QBR transformation a success.
Get access to the right budget buckets.
MSP relationships often begin within clients’ technology budgets, which is a good bucket of funds to use as an entry point. However, it’s also a highly cost-sensitive budget that can limit your long-term revenue. To become a bigger MSP, you have to get out of that technology budget and into the people/productivity and outcomes budgets. Looking across the industry, large-class MSPs work their way into pulling more from those buckets than from the technology bucket.
The productivity budget can be extremely lucrative. Assuming a typical worker's salary of $5,000 per month, keeping their PC bootup time low and removing the friction from cybersecurity measures might boost that employee’s productivity by 10%. That’s $500 a month. If your MSP bills $200 a month, it’s a 150% return on your client’s investment. Companies are willing to invest heavily in software and services (read: pay you more) when you can deliver that kind of payback.
Managing outcomes is the other budget that MSPs need to tap into to really grow their MRR. It’s about managing the key drivers of your client’s business. Unlike the productivity budget, they aren’t necessarily looking for a traditional dollar return on the money spent from this bucket. What clients want is something that will truly accelerate their business and enable them to get to the next level. In the outcomes conversation, customers aren’t just looking to capture a 10% return on their investment. No, this is where they’re willing to explore ways to turn $1,500 into $15,000 or even $150,000. Your clients know they need to make some big changes to go along with those big returns, but that’s why this bucket is key—the potential revenue lurking in the outcomes budget for an MSP is immense. If you want to be a big MSP in the sector, this is the bucket you need to access.
Shift your thinking and change the conversation.
How do you get into those lucrative buckets? It all comes down to the conversations you have with your clients. Larger MSPs have figured out how to move from talking technology to talking outcomes, from talking about stack alignment to talking about business alignment. With a change in mindset and a new focus for client discussions, you can support customers’ growth by helping them dial in and automate their solutions. You can provide ways to help them increase productivity and level up their business. This opens up an entirely new level of revenue. Remember those small MSPs that got to be big MSPs? They did it by getting more revenue per client, which means adding more value and moving up the value chain in client need.
Step 3: Focus on your own growth
To maximize your new free time for strategic things, like listening to your clients and learning more about what drives their organizations—all of which adds up to putting time into making your own growth a reality—CloudRadial has the tools and features to make it happen. Our CSA integrates with your PSA, creating a highly productive and cohesive environment. Coupled with our powerful automations, we give time back to your team so they can apply their skills and energy to higher-value actions that will move your business forward. Data gathering and analysis, routine communications, training, and other tasks can be turned over to our CSA to free up the time you need.
Our platform also enables you to raise your client engagement to a new level. We provide self-service capabilities to empower your customers to do more for themselves and to deliver the transparency clients want. You can finally turn those old QBRs into forward-looking conversations with your clients about the outcomes they want to achieve and how you can help them do that. You’ll have relevant insights available to identify new opportunities to boost customers’ productivity and deliver truly meaningful ROI. Across these capabilities, we help you scale your business to increase profits, maximize the value of your workforce, and attract your ideal clients. To learn more about what CloudRadial’s self-service CSA solution can do for you and your customers, schedule a quick overview today.
