Mamma Mia, Here I Go Again: Why You Need to Grow Your MSP (and How).
Welcome back, Autotask Warriors. Like Mr. Rogers, I think it’s a beautiful day in the MSP neighborhood, and I am glad you are here.
I have had a lot of conversations with MSP owners this year. I hear from some that are going like gangbusters and raking it in. Others believe we are in a recession and struggling to survive. I think the key to success for both situations is a clear plan for growth.
But how?
As I was reminded recently in a great conversation with an Owner named Yusuf, each MSP owner just wants tomorrow to be better than today. Others have told me that anything more than one day at a time is hard to visualize. And we do talk about a lot of long-term and heavy-lifting stuff here. I get it. This stuff can be daunting.
So, we’re going to be talking about ways to make your MSP better....one step at a time. (And, at the end, I promise to give you ways to break it down into bites.)
This week, I’m going revisit the idea that MSPs need to grow to thrive, hence the title: Mamma Mia, here we go again.
This week’s bottom line:
The ultimate goal of any MSP owner should be to grow the business.
I say “should” since I always hear from a group of MSP owners that have a “lifestyle business” and are perfectly happy where they are, don’t want the hassle of dealing with employees and government regulations, and just want to pay their bills and take a yearly vacation. I wish you the best of luck.
To the rest of you, I offer these three reasons why your ultimate goal should be growth:
You either grow or go out of business; you cannot stand still.
Growth means you can do more with the Company:
Hire better Employees
Give more to the Community and Charities
Live more securely, able to depend on the business to support your personal lifestyle.
It is a Retirement strategy (as in you can actually retire before you’re 90).
And a bonus fourth answer: when you are growing and have a properly functioning MSP team, you aren’t buried in tickets and working 100 hours a week, and you have the 12 minutes to look at the “Warriors of the Net” video when I welcome you Autotask warriors, and you are reminded of the classic video that every Network+ class is required to watch.
So, what is preventing the Owner from Growing the Business?
Lack of Marketing or Sales expertise
Not having an assistant in the areas of Bookkeeping, Sales, and Service Coordination
#1 reason is the lack of Freedom from the Operations
Lack of Marketing or Sales expertise
For marketing, many would argue no one is better than Robin Robins at TMT.
For Sales Coaching, I believe no one is better than Manny Vargas.
For Sales Dashboard and Opportunities:
If you are a lone salesperson – Excel is your friend
If you have multiple Salespeople or have a Sales Assistant – Advanced Global can help you build out your sales process in Autotask and show you how to use semi-automated Autotask Opportunities – including a 30-day New Client TLC drip campaign.
Not having an assistant in the areas of Bookkeeping, Sales, and Service Coordination
Whether this is one person, three people, or three teams, no owner can do it all or focus on Growing the Business when saddled with these clerical activities. I speak from experience. When starting Advanced Global, the first hire was an assistant that I could delegate clerical work to. She (happens to be a woman) is still with us today. I depend on the support Team immensely. When the first hire went on maternity leave, it put me into a tailspin. I was not sure I could get everything done without assistance. We survived with a temporary worker that was brought on to replace her, who stayed with us for many years, and that hire also worked out well.
Lack of Freedom from Operational Areas
This brings us to the #1 reason an Owner of an MSP is unable to grow the business – Lack of Freedom from the Operations.
Right off the top I want to say there is an eBook for that: Unshackled
To be free from being dragged into Operational Areas, an Owner of an MSP needs three things:
Trust in the Team to deliver on the Sales promises, to do the right things, and to provide a Superior Client Experience.
Have Processes and Tools in place so the Team can meet the Owner and Client expectations without breaking a sweat.
Transactional and Historical data readily available to monitor Operations from a distance to be fully aware of performance and able, in a positive, collaborative way, to hold the Team Accountable.
Trust comes once the Ops Team has the Processes and Tools they need and the Owner’s quick monitoring and accountability reporting is in place.
So, let's start with the Processes and Tools. There are at least 85 Standard, Repetitive, Streamlined Operating Processes that a typical MSP needs. (Breathe...I promise I can break it down for you in one-day-at-a-time steps.) Most of these processes are manual because, as much as people think AI is smart, it is neither Artificial nor Intelligent – it is just a whole lot faster at processing a lot of data. In talking with many MSP AI providers, they can automate a process once the Client Request has been taken in and Triaged. Before that step, there is not enough information for them to run their complex algorithms against, so until a Client Request is Triaged, they are stumped.
Once a Client Request has been taken in and Triaged, there is enough horsepower inside the Autotask PSAutomation software to Automate or Semi-Automate many of the repetitive processes, without paying for another AI program.
The 85 processes are grouped into these categories:
Pre-Work
Intake
Categorization
Triage
Tech Allocation & Scheduling
Prioritization
Automated Mechanisms
Organization (Dashboards)
Tech Ed & Organization (Dashboards)
AT System Administrator
Other
Live Reports
Close Out
(Breathe....I promise I can break these down into one-day-at-a-time pieces...just painting the big picture here so you know the light at the end of the tunnel is NOT an oncoming train.)
And yes, there are Autotask PSAutomation improvements scattered throughout the Process improvements. Each one is a configuration change to support the process which delivers the improvements.
For Monitoring, we are talking about an Owner’s dashboard which answers the most important questions: How many Open Requests, how many Open Requests for our most important Clients, and which ones need intervention. Also, it displays Team performance, like Open/Closed Tickets, Hours Worked, and Ticket Counts per Tech. And we can’t forget to mention the Sales Widgets, like Client’s last Reach Out, Network Assessment Non-Conversion to MS Client, and Prospects. (See, these make it a lot simpler to own and manage.)
When it comes to accountability reporting for both the Team and the Owner, there are 14 Advanced Live Reports and one Black Hole Ticket Evaluation that keeps everything running smoothly. The Advanced Live Reports are grouped into three categories: Profitability Reporting, Leading Profitability Reporting, and Lagging Profitability Reporting.
(Yes, I said “Advanced,” but when we can get these going in a way that doesn’t overwhelm, and we feed you the new information a bit at a time, we make them more readable than the canned reports that come with Autotask.)
Profitability Reporting (based on LEAN Process Profitability KPIs): (Owner)
Resource Utilization
SLA Performance
Mean Time to Resolve
Reactive Hours per Endpoint per Month
Profitability by Client
Leading Profitability Reporting: (Service Manager)
Black Hole Ticket Evaluation
Workflow Distribution Report
Service Delivery Forecast Report
Backlog List of Tickets
Scheduled Tickets with no Future Scheduling
Real-Time Time Entry Performance
Escalation Report
Re-Open Report
1st Contact Resolution Report
Lagging Profitability Reporting: (Account Manager)
CSat
Net Promoter Score
(I know you glossed over the above, and that’s okay – the important thing is we can do this one step at a time.)
Summary:
Owning an MSP should not be like Napoleon at Waterloo or Custer’s Last Stand. You should not feel like you are always Under Attack. We want to take great care of our Clients and help them to have great lives, thus The Name of the Game is Money, Money, Money.
If an Owner wants to focus on Growing the Business, the best place to start and the best place to invest is in Operational Improvements. For every $1 spent in Operational Improvements, the ROI is $6 to $10.
Operational Efficiency is the Key to Growing an MSP’s business. More Clients through better Marketing or an improved Sales process just make the MSP busier. More Clients mean more tickets, meaning more work, and the need to hire more techs, which results in higher expenses and not improved profits.
With improved Operational Efficiency you can Grow the Business by
10% over the next quarter without hiring a Tech
5-15% improved T&M billing from Managed Service Clients over the next quarter after that
You are 3 quarters away from reducing your churn by 50%, meaning improving your Sales effectiveness by 17%
And in the 4th quarter, you can expect another 10-20% growth without hiring a tech.
For more information on why to invest in Operational Improvements to Grow the Business, download the Unshackled: Freedom from Service Delivery Issues eBook here. That is your FIRST step to make today better than yesterday.
To make tomorrow better than today, we can talk about you specifically and the baby steps to get going. I know a “sales call” can be a bit much, so sign up for 30 days free of the Service Delivery Gladiator’s Community here. If you post your questions in the forums and join our members-only calls on Thursdays and Fridays, I will give you 30 more days free AND personally answer your questions in a safe environment.
Back to your FIRST step: Enjoy the read of Unshackled,
And please, don’t be a Super Trouper: Take a Chance on Me.
Steve & Co