Integrated and Seamless Solution

Becoming a world class Strategic Technology provider has never been easier. However, to accomplish this you need to have the right tools, mindset and training.  In this video and blog we spend some time talking through how streamlining our products is resulting in a big win for MSPs wanting to take their client engagement to the next level.

The Problem

No one likes complex product lines. We want to buy a product that solves the problem rather than trying to understand the nuances of licensing.  Ya...I am looking at you Microsoft. Seriously, the number of times I have run into licensing issues with MS in my career...That is why I was so happy when SaaS solutions started coming around. One monthly fee and you get access, that's it. This allows you to run forward with your clients at full speed without roadblocks.

Unfortunately, with Managed Services Platform and Virtual C being separate companies with separate solutions that relied on each other this made things complex. We had the bloat issue Denes talked about in last week’s blog “Integrated Seamless Solution”. Not only did you have to think about which MSPL product fit best, you also had to decide if the HIT framework and vCIO templates were right for your business model. 

The Solution

With the merger one of the biggest motivators was to have one integrated seamless solution. With that came simplified product lines  There are, no longer any complex add on software packages and no complications with who you need to talk to to get support. .  

Simply find the package that fits your business model and go. Each new package we roll out over the next few months will include the HIT framework as well as all templates generated by Virtual C and MSPL over the past 7 years. Everything you need to succeed today. The major difference between the packages going forward will be how much time you can dedicate to client management activities. 

• Entrepreneur Package: Is turnkey, no editing, fast and easy deployment so you can start changing the narrative immediately. 
• Pro Package: Built for the busy MSP that is wanting to customize the look and feel of their reports, scorecards, and message. 
• Delegate Package: For MSPs that are ready to delegate activities to multiple account managers,vCIOs and team members. 
• Teams Package: for the MSP who needs to scale sales and services across a variety of teams to ensure nothing falls through the cracks.

Don't worry, all you existing members are grandfathered in, your existing packages will not change and you will be able to continue doing business as usual. 

Immediate benefits:

• Humanize IT templates and coaching will be available in all new packages going forward.
• MSPL Entrepreneur Package will be recrafted as a turnkey solution for $199/mo!
• All Member questions will go through Member Success Department led by Skip Ziegler.
• Humanize IT Framework staff training course available for continued education
• Free quarterly vCIO success coaching to all who opt in to a new package

We hope that you see how this will help take your program to the next level. Simple, easy and effective so you can keep serving customers in your new capacity as a world class strategist and tech provider.

Merger Informational Webinar - Apr 22
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Merger meant for you

Virtual C and Managed Services Platform have been working together to create tools to increase customer success since 2017. Together we have created a turnkey product line with all the tools, templates, coaching and resources necessary for success. These all form the battle-tested Humanize IT framework that many of you are familiar with. 

This merger will help the MSP community address the increased pressure of staying competitive through client engagement and demonstrating strategic value to clients. 

You might be asking one big question: what is the goal of this merger?

The goal is to enable MSPs of all sizes to work less and achieve higher client engagement through one seamless solution. This will help give more streamlined help and allow us to serve you better.

One thing this pandemic has made clear is that MSPs can no longer wait to improve their client engagement, QBRs and IT strategy processes. MSPs now know the need to demonstrate their value to clients and standardize their technology stack in order to stay competitive.

MSPs often lack clear direction, knowledge, resources and time to make this a reality. That results in price pressure, client churn and lost profitability.

Managed Services Platform has developed one of the most advanced software tool sets for vCIOs and Account Managers. They enable MSPs to engage clients, differentiate from competition and help standardize their operation. Humanize IT has been a partner with Managed Services Platform since 2017, providing coaching, consultation, templates, reports and community in order to implement vCIO and Account Management best practices on the platform. 

This is an exciting announcement that will allow all around better and more efficient use for you! Check back at our blog for more information about this merger in the coming weeks or for further questions email us.

Lessons Learned: How to thrive during uncertain times

Throughout the pandemic and these times of uncertainty, we’ve seen various industries defaulting to panic mode. They don’t know what to do or what’s coming next, so they hold their breath, make decisions in the moment and hope for the best. Moving from one thing to the next without strategy has left these employees increasingly tired and unmotivated. 

In the technology world, we have a phrase for this practice that we hear multiple times a day: Firefighting. Firefighting means you’re spending your day putting out one fire after, always moving to the next issue with no time to plan ahead or create solid solutions for the future.

Being stuck in this firefighting mode comes with a big problem: burnout.  Always having something to do is fun at first; it feels like you’re coming in as a hero and fixing the problem. Then reality hits. You aren’t getting anything done, you’re just bouncing around from one thing to the next and creating recurring problems.  Fortunately, there’s a way to stop this, and that’s where Lessons Learned comes in.

Lessons Learned is one of those phrases that we see thrown around anecdotally, but rarely is it actually used in practice.  This is a pity because learning from your mistakes is what differentiates people who thrive during stress versus people who simply get through it. 

In an unprecedented and often difficult time like this, you have to make sure you come out on top. Here’s how: whenever you triage and fix an issue, you MUST schedule time to talk about it later. This is called a Lessons Learned. You will ask these three questions during the follow up:

• What went well?
• What went poorly?
• What actions do we have to take?

Lessons Learned: How to thrive during uncertain times

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Let’s look at these questions in more detail and explore how you can do it in practice. Implementing this Lessons Learned process will put you ahead of your competition when it comes to overcoming business challenges that have resulted from the pandemic.

• What went well? - During this question, you will mark down the things you always want to do. Remind your staff and yourself of what you consistently do well and what you want to continue doing.
• What went poorly? - What hindered your progress? You want to mark down what would have led to a better resolution.
• What action items do we have? - This is where you take action! Take what went well and document it so you can do it again. Take what went poorly and make sure it does not happen next time. Maybe you need a tool, maybe you need better communication, or maybe you need better strategy. Whatever it is, identify it and then put it into action.  

This may seem obvious and overly simplistic, but here is the problem: if it’s so easy, why haven’t you been doing it?  There’s no better time to implement this process than right now, because COVID-19 is still in full swing and issues will continue to arise and increase. You can answer these three questions in less than five minutes, but you often choose to not. One of the biggest reasons is that you plan to do it “someday”. “Someday” means you have no real plan.

So, here is the trick — you must schedule your Lessons Learned and dedicate an adequate amount of time to it. They MUST be on your calendar as soon as you finish troubleshooting, which means it needs to be part of your normal troubleshooting process.

It doesn't matter if it takes minutes and you jot down a few notes, or if it is an hour long meeting with multiple departments. However, you need to do it every time there is a problem.

This is the main action item from your first Lessons Learned.  Start implementing this three-step plan and stop putting out fires. Although this is a challenging time, you can still thrive!

Here is your first lessons learned:

• What went well:    You are triaging clients and keeping them running smoothly.
• What went poorly: You aren't following up on long term strategy to help your client’s success.
• Action Item:  We will be hosting a 1 hour webinar on September 7th to walk you through successful delivery of a lessons learned using an amazing tool that makes it easy.  Sign up today!

Lessons Learned: How to thrive during uncertain times

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Your web conference setup sucks (and how to fix it)

In today’s distributed workforce everyone is settling into a routine. Many, however,  haven't really put objective thought into how their presence is viewed by their clients. We are still playing by old rules: dress nice, speak clearly, have a predefined agenda. This is no longer the case, and it takes a back seat to web presence. So, for those of you who don’t want to read this whole thing, here are the 3 things you need to know.

1. Your web setup is too casual and unprofessional.
2. Your current setup will cost you customers in the long run.
3. For less than the cost of a new outfit you can distinguish yourself.

We have been given a lot of grace lately but this is going to change.  There is a right way to present yourself online, just as there is a right way to present yourself in an in-person meeting.  Would you show up to a meeting without considering your appearance? Right now you think you look nice but in reality you are coming across like a 5th year college senior. Let us show you how you could look with a little work and you can decide if it is worth it.  

Honestly you are being outperformed by twitch kids in their mom’s basement.  Let's fix that.

Your sound sucks

One of the problems we have with web meetings is that even if you are dressed for success you can still look and sound like crap. That three piece suit will not save you if your microphone makes you sound like you are under water. Let me say this clearly:

Sound is King.

It no longer matters how many thousands of dollars you have spent on a wardrobe, your customer will not pay attention if they cannot understand you.

For less than a pair of cheap shoes you can upgrade your microphone. Blue Snowball mics are pretty much idiot proof. However, feel free to do your own research. But get ANYTHING that is not a built in mic on a webcam or laptop.

You look terrible

Most built in webcams as well are horrible. Some of you are lucky enough to have a high def camera but they still have crappy lenses.There is only so much you can do with a tiny lens that was meant for quick conversations and government spying.  A good camera is less than a sport coat from an outlet store. Getting a Logitech Brio will make that colorful outfit really look stunning even in low light.

Also lets talk light,  your houses are dark places. Instead of new pants, get a ring light or soft box from your favorite vendor, brighter is better, but make it dimmable because you value your eyes. Open your windows, sit them on one side of you, do not look directly into them.  One side of your body should be lighter than the other.

FLOOD your room with light. 

If you think you have too much light in your room you are wrong. For comparison I have 3 west facing windows 9 sq ft each wide open and 2x15,000 Lux lights at 6800K.  You should be able to do surgery in my room.  So...no, your room isn’t too bright.

In web meetings your eyes need to stay focused just below the camera, not on the screen.  Have a hard time with eye contact? Now is your time to shine.  Do NOT look at people unless you are trying to read expressions, look just below your webcam while presenting, this will keep people’s attention and make them feel like you are talking to them.

Follow these basic rules and when you interact with people you will stand out. If you are bidding for new clients you will look amazing and they will want this professional to be on their team.  The right basic setup will differentiate you from everyone else. All for less than the cost of a new outfit.

How We Predict the IT Industry Will Adapt to a New Crisis

One of the best things about IT is that we thrive on change.  Even when the world is on fire, we are at our best — we have come through for society several times over within the last 20 years alone. Our resilience and adaptability are what make our industry so valuable.  

STAY RELEVANT, EXPAND YOUR REACH AND
ACHIEVE YOUR FULL POTENTIAL!

Crisis-Fueled Cyber Security Services

Even in the dial up days, we knew cyber security was important. However, after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, we saw a boom in security initiatives. Technology personnel stepped up and a whole new realm of cyber security was born. 

Crisis-Fueled Cloud Services

After the recession hit in 2008, we saw a massive change in how we do business.  SaaS had been around for years, but it wasn’t until we learned that we needed more robust applications to support a diverse workforce that we saw businesses really invest in them. Stability of budget, consistent delivery models, and able to scale on a moment’s notice? Business signed up!

What New IT Services Will This Crisis Fuel?

The previous two examples bring us to our current situation in 2020. We have been aware of work-from-home strategies in the past, but many companies saw it as just a perk.  Well...now it is a necessity. With the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, we have businesses asking questions about continuity and work-from-home now more than ever. Once again, we are seeing technology professionals step up and deliver school, business, and personal connectivity to hundreds of millions of people overnight!

What should we expect as a technical profession? I predict the death of the traditional, brick-and-mortar company.  We are about to fully enter the era of distributed workforces. We have been seeing this develop gradually, but now it’s manifested into reality. We should expect high-priority requests for diversified networks that allow users to work from anywhere. We should also expect tech spending to increase dramatically, while other projects get placed on the back burner.

Additionally, I predict another technical boom. Within the next year we will see entire businesses coming to market in order to deliver work-from-home offices, complete with seminars, workshops and best practices. We will see a more open-minded culture toward virtual assistants and other virtual employees. Is your company ready for this challenge? 

What do you need to do now to get ahead of the curve?

Once you have some breathing room, will you help your clients create robust home offices that are interconnected as well as their brick-and-mortar is?

I believe every tech company needs to provide their clients with the following over the coming year:

1. A STRONG delivery of distributed workforce strategy
2. Technology that’s aligned with business initiatives
3. Remote assistance that’s better than on-site

Get these three things ready; if you have the distributed workforce product prepared, your next step is to up your game with business alignment. Don’t drive this as a technology solution; it’s a business solution! I may be biased, but vCIO strategies will help you here. You need to be ready to show your clients how your distributed workforce strategy will not disrupt their business.

Lastly, you need to up your game on remote assistance. Remote tech support should not just be “good enough”.  You should consistently be delivering your clients an even better IT experience than they are used to. No more pinching pennies here —  this is the place to heavily invest in to support those distributed workforces.

Welcome to the new age. I know everything is chaotic right now, but we are about to go on another ride. 

Change is in the air. Are you ready?

Why your meetings suck

Imagine sitting in an operational meeting with your accountant. They are telling you about reconciliation and collecting receipts. They then tell you how many transactions took place and where they need clarification on spend.  Bored yet? I am typing this and I am bored…

This is how your clients feel when attending your quarterly or monthly operational meetings on connectwise tickets. The SLAs and project status are important to YOU and they are kind of important to the business but the method in which you are portraying information is wrong.  How do I know this? I have been an IT professional for over 20 years. Today many clients will ask me to sit in on meetings with their MSPs to help them understand what is going on. It truly is horrible, clients have just accepted that this is the way things are.

Lets go a bit darker now. The truly sad part is that even the account manager and techs are bored in these meetings. They are viewed as a necessary evil because someone told them that a MSP best practice is to meet with the client on a regular basis and give status updates. So here you are, in another boring meeting, wishing that it were time to leave. 

“Everyone is miserable but you keep moving forward 
because it is what you are supposed to do.” 

Now lets flip the tables for a second, that is right, just grab the top and flip the whole thing over. Screw what you are supposed to do, let's talk about what you want to do. 

Take Your Remote Presence to the Next Level

What you want to talk to your client about is the new tool that is available and how it will help their business. You want to talk about how if they would just upgrade their internet most of their problems would vanish. You want to convince them that you can help their business thrive in spite of their restrained budget.

Guess what.  Your client wants this too! Your client WANTS to talk about how you can empower them to do better things.  Your client WANTS you to show them how to best use their technology budget to empower their company!

So how do we get from the boring operational meetings to stimulating meetings?  Have a conversation about the future. Stop talking and presenting about technology today and change focus to 6 months from now. Ask your client what their biggest problem is today. Ask them what the biggest event coming up is.  Ask questions, ask a lot and listen. Then take some time and think about what they said and ask yourself some honest questions about how you can help them.

Do you know what this is called? Strategy.  Forward thinking contextual conversations that marry technology and business goals. This is how you create engaging meetings that really focus the client on where they can be.

Do you know what happens to MSPs that do this? They grow a crazy amount because now their clients are actually engaging in conversations.  Whether you are meeting annually, quarterly, monthly or weekly. By changing from presentations to conversations you are able to get their attention.

Want proof? During your next client meeting ask this one question “Tell me about the next 12 months here” sit back and listen. I can cite many MSPs who will talk your ear off about how they started conversing with their clients and have so many projects that their biggest problem is getting them all on the schedule!  I can cite MSPs who went from small contracts to $15,000+/MRR clients because they listened!

Stop the monotony, turn your presentations into conversations today!

Why your QBRs are costing you, customers

For those of us who have been in technology for a while, we have seen some pretty crazy setups from well-meaning people. Largely this is because we have very smart capable people trying to work in environments with limited knowledge.  Most were trying their hardest but just didn’t know any better.  

Some of the crazy things I saw back in the day were “vlans” that were actually just subnets, firewalls with giant holes in the ruleset, and unrestricted VPNs that were completely insecure. These mistakes were not made by lazy admins, they were made by well-intentioned technicians that didn’t know they were doing anything wrong. All they knew was that things were working smoothly.

But how do we know when we are doing something incorrectly?

This is how it works in the technical industry,  new items come out so often that we do our best to learn what we can.  Most of us will reach out when something isn't working. Google is always there. We can also hire a consultant who specializes to review our work and can show us the ropes. But how do we know when we are doing something incorrectly? After all ‘Any-Any’ firewall rules will get the job done right?

The same problem exists within vCIO programs and QBR delivery.  How would you know if you are doing them wrong? Are you assuming things are going well just because your client is present and getting details?  If this is the case then it is very much like putting an Any-Any firewall rule in place. Sure it will work, but what happens when your client experiences the right way?

There is definitely a ‘right’ way to deliver a vCIO program and definitely a ‘right’ way to deliver business-focused QBRs.  We have many stories of MSPs who lose customers when the customer sees a better way and realizes what they have been missing.

The best way I can think to help you identify whether or not you are running quality QBRs is to compare and contrast a tactical vs a business-focused QBR. Tactical QBRs are very useful when talking to technical professionals, business QBRs are best suited for talking to...yes you guessed it...business professionals.  Let's take a look at a QBR delivery by a vCIO. The first situation will focus on a tactical delivery and the other will focus on the business. 

Tactical QBR:

MSP R Us comes in to deliver a review of their activities for the quarter. They do a fantastic job of showing the customer how many tickets were processed and give them progress reports on the firewall upgrade. There is even a review of the new features the firewall offers. The customer is happy with the progress on the upgrade and they can see that tickets are being handled in an appropriate amount of time.

Business-focused QBR

MSP R Us comes in to deliver their review of activities for the quarter.  However, they do not talk about tickets or the firewall upgrade. Instead, they talk through how the business is doing and review major business objectives from the previous quarter.  It is brought up that last quarter the training team was having issues sharing videos with clients and hosting webcasts so a firewall project was started to stabilize the connection. The conversation centers around how things are going with the training team and if they are meeting their goals now. It turns out the upgrade has helped significantly. 

They have noticed though that while the streaming has stabilized, they are not getting high resolution and would like to know if someone could help them out. The vCIO notes the request for the coming quarter as a project and will open a ticket.  

The conversation continues with any other areas of business that need to be addressed in the next quarter. The client states that they have an big product release coming up and are feeling anxious.  The vCIO also notes this and creates a change freeze during that time to ensure that disruptions to workflow are minimal. 

Review

In either situation, nothing was done “wrong” persay but you can see the business-focused QBR was much more fluid and quite a bit more information was gathered about how to help the client.

Most MSPs will run tactical QBRs because it is familiar and sticks to their wheelhouse. However, they are missing out on a big piece of customer experience. They are also missing out on valuable insights as to upcoming projects and whether or not project delivery is meeting business goals.  

The question is,  how do you get your QBRs to be less tactical and more business-focused? The good news is, with focus and hard work you can build this. The bad news is that just like learning appropriate firewall design it is a bit of a process.  You need a few pieces:

• An annual framework for delivery where you have created a relationship with your client.
• A continuous feedback loop for business objectives.
• Give your staff the confidence to lead non-technical conversations.

You can create this process with hard work, or you can also hire a consulting/coaching agency to come in and develop the process and employees.

The one thing we know is that if you do not start delivering business-focused QBRs someone else will. So the real question you need to ask is:

Do you want to be the MSP clients switch FROM, 

or do you want to be the MSP clients switch TO?

Why vCIO Programs Fail

The industry is changing, you need to evolve or be left behind by your clients. The next step to MSPs is vCIO, but how do we get there?

I have spent the last few years coaching MSPs on how to create successful vCIO programs. There is a consistent message across every single MSP:

“We want a vCIO program but have not been able to get it going”

BE A BUSINESS PARTNER, NOT JUST AN MSP

I want to dive into why this is happening and what you can do about it. But first some history:

Technology has been around since before the wheel, helping us do things easier. When computers first came around they were used to help process data more efficiently. Businesses used these devices to solve problems and disrupt industry. When we first started out you could make a killing doing PC support because everyone was trying to use this technology they didn’t understand.

Then as more professionals entered the marketplace and technology needs evolved we shifted focus to mostly server and network support with PC support still being a staple because labor for that is now very cheap. Then things started moving off premises as business applications moved to the cloud. What this means is there is less infrastructure to maintain on site and it is more and more common to see larger companies outsource IT support.

So what we have seen is support move from PCs to Servers to the Cloud. Now what?

While technology used to be something that companies used to differentiate themselves or create unique opportunities, it now plays a critical role in their business. Things that are critical to organizations, are managed strategically, at the executive level. Your clients are making strategic IT decisions today, the problem is often times they don’t have the right people utilizing the right information to make those decisions. Strategic MSPs deliver services that allow them to take a seat at the table to help manage technology to meet the needs of the business. In other words you need to bring strategy to the table. This is what the vCIO does. But you already knew this, otherwise why are you reading this blog? What you want to know is “How do I get there?”

Here is the problem I keep coming across: MSPs think that strategy is desiging out a product life cycle.

While this is a great best practice, you will end up losing customers if you focus on it.

Your customers don’t care that you have a plan for upgrading firewalls on a schedule, nor do they care about your plans to deliver next gen products. What they care about is the same thing you do: Making Money.

In order to do this you have to do something that most IT professionals avoid like the plague. “Business Strategy” You know, all those boring business classes that you make fun of and meetings with random people that go nowhere, you need to learn it and apply it to technology. You get to become a manager. This means regularly scheduled meetings that focus on business talk.

I often refer to myself as a business consultant with a technology focus. The reason for this is because I need to present what I do to business leaders. They understand the business consultant, they are someone who helps a business solve problems. I just do it from a technology standpoint.

By setting the table like this I am able to get them to focus on strategic sessions that do not talk about technology but rather what problems are facing the business as a whole. I do this through 2 main items:

• Project Discovery: SWOT strategy sessions but any business strategy framework will do. You just need to learn about the client’s problems and opportunities facing their business.
• Audit: The next thing you do is learn their technology and business. Some standard audit will do, just as long as it is consistent. I recommend a technology stack audit and Porter’s 5 forces analysis for the business audit.

Once these are done put this all together and pitch your technology solutions and explain the SPECIFIC business problem it addresses. If you ever say “Because it is getting old” you are losing your client. If you mention firewalls or servers...you are going to lose your client. What you need to say is “We will allow sales staff to process more clients by implementing technology to increase their access to the salesforce platform” THEN you can mention the technology that will do this. Maybe it is a virtual workspace, or maybe you are implementing a more robust WAN, it doesn’t matter at that point because you have already won the customer over.

Technology is a business augmentor

This is the core message you need to get to your clients. You want to frame everything you do in this light. By understanding their business and technology, you will be able to pitch solutions that will deliver a service that makes a difference. Your clients will brag about how you helped them disrupt their industry, develop a world class classroom or break through the glass ceiling.

In the end, stop talking about technology’s gadgets and gizmos. Start talking about business strategy and how to make your clients money!

Virtual C engages clients to increase the success of their IT delivery. Want to learn more? 

BE A BUSINESS PARTNER, NOT JUST AN MSP

6 Best Practices of Top Performing vCIOs

If you think technology strategy involves talking to your client about firewalls and server patching levels you are doing it wrong!

Technology is becoming a commodity. Just a few years ago you needed an engineer just to install wireless. Now anybody with a cheque book can order turnkey solutions from amazon and manage their entire technology stack from the cloud. Businesses need partners to help them compete, they don’t need to be more educated on the greatest next generation firewall.

Becoming a Strategic Partner with vCIO Projects

In this industry technology providers need to step up their game and offer strategy to their clients that takes technology to the next level.

To solve this problem Virtual C and Managed Services Platform partnered to create a vCIO solution set that contains all the tools necessary to take your MSP to the next level.

It isn’t complicated, it doesn’t require a MBA to implement, and you can start doing it today! This solution set provides the training material, services, marketing video, and automated report to engage on a whole new level. In less than an hour you will be equipped and have the confidence to deliver a product that will generate new services and projects for your company.

Become a strategic forerunner, implement strategic processes with your clients today!

Member Driven Development Roadmap

Member Driven Development Roadmap - software, integration and content development is under one umbrella resulting in more competitive edge for you