How to transition from the server room to the boardroom

This week's question: How do I become a virtual CIO when I'm “just a tech?”  This week Denes and Myles Olson discuss a path to transition to the virtual CIO role. You may be more comfortable in the server room, but now you're needed in the boardroom.

To learn more, visit our MSP 2.0 Business Building Platform. 

Delivering Business Focused QBRs

ADAM WALTER AT VIRTUAL C

You would like to be a high-value business partner in your client’s eyes rather than a basic technology service provider. Your QBR process is a critical part of influencing their engagement up to a higher level. Watch this recorded webinar with our vCIO expert guide, Adam Walter, who has shared his 5 step process to make any technical QBR into a business-focused one.

6 Best Practices of Top Performing vCIOs

ADAM WALTER AT VIRTUAL C

Watch this interview with our vCIO expert guide, Adam Walter, to learn how to be more engaged with clients by finding best practices for becoming a trusted business advisor in 6 single steps.

 

Escape the free-advice MSP trap once and for all

What the heck is the MSP marketing funnel?

Denes and Myles discuss the top, middle and bottom of the MSP marketing funnel and how it relates to the buyer's journey through your marketing process.  Understand what type of marketing works at the different levels. Follow these steps to learn how to define your buyer-personas so your marketing efforts directly target your ideal customers.

START GROWING WITH MSP MARKETING RELATED RESOURCES FOR FREE

Demand generation with funnel websites
BY DEREK MARIN AT SIMPLE SELLING
Watch this interview with our MSP inbound marketing guide, Derek Marin, to win over new prospective clients by finding best practices that will transform your website into a tool that shortens sales cycles and increases close rates.

Build your MSP with the help of virtual CIO services

Colin Knox is a true entrepreneur in the managed services provider industry. He’s been operating a very mature and well-polished boutique managed services provider in Calgary, Canada.

He’s also been recognized by Penton Technology Group in the ‘MSP Mentor 250’ which lists the best of the best managed service provider executives, entrepreneurs, experts, coaches and community leaders.

Colin’s service philosophy involves helping people grow and to that end giving them a chance to learn and develop into virtual CIOs. His business growth focuses on high level services.

In the interview I tried to learn how he was able to put this together.

I was interested to learn Colin has just exited from the day-to-day operation a couple of months ago and is dedicating his full attention to a very interesting project. I honestly did not realize the full impact of this before our talk.ortance of this before the talk.

If you’re interested in learning the stories and real-life examples from somebody who’s made it, watch the video and grow your business! Then use the 9 decisions worksheet in our MSP 2.0 Virtual CIO Service Delivery Quickstarter Kit to begin your transformation to a modern MSP.

Use the 9 decisions worksheet in our MSP 2.0 vCIO Service Delivery Quickstarter Kit to begin your transformation to a modern MSP. 

Do You Know Your Customers?

Knowing to whom you want to sell your services is as important as knowing what you’re going to sell, if not more. Think about it an airline...would WestJet or Southwest Airlines be as successful as they are if they were trying to sell their frill-free economy class seats to the wealthy first-class traveler? Starbucks and Apple only offer products priced well above the average for coffee or computers with people lining up to pay. In fact I’m enjoying my Venti-Americano as I write this. So what makes these companies so successful at whatever they do? They’ve defined their ideal customer so well that now we as consumers identify ourselves with their products.

The good news: your business can do this too.

When MSP business owners are asked to describe their ideal customer they give a wide range of answers, ranging from “the kind I can find” or “the kind that pays their bills on time” to some superlative customer that can be the saving-grace for their struggling business. These same business owners are also likely shelling out monthly to attract more. What’s usually and most troublingly overlooked are the following two simple ideas:

They have not defined:

1.  whom they WANT as customers (buyer personas)

AND

2.  whom they DON’T WANT as customers (negative buyer personas)

It can be easy to confuse the two, especially when cashflow is tight. But even worse, the customers we don’t want take up the most time and resources and will rarely help us grow a stable, profitable business beyond the short term.

So who is your ideal customer?  

• Who has purchasing authority? Probably the CEO/COO/CFO.
• What problems can your IT managed services provider solve for them? Hint: these problems need to be in their language...they probably don’t think about the technology of virtualization or the cloud.
• Where do they look for solutions? Friends? Google? Who or what is their authorized source?
• How to they make purchasing decisions? Are they looking for a special price, a good customer testimonial or something else
• What size is the company? How many seats? 10, 50 or 100+ positions?
• What is their level of technical complexity? Do they need any industry specific solutions?

We need to also consider that most businesses have a few different buyer personas. It’s wise to define as many as you need and key your inbound marketing efforts toward each of them specifically. We also need to define the ones we don’t want. Just don’t be afraid to rule out or “fire” a few prospective customers. Focus will serve your business well in the long term.

Where can your ideal customer be found?

Every business has problems and every problem has a solution, ultimately supported by some kind of technology you can offer. But don’t confuse the two...buyers care about the solution, not the technology. Don’t take my word for it...try having a conversation with someone in a language they don’t speak. You could both be thinking the same thing (the solution) but without translation (the technology) you’re not going to get very far.

Start speaking the same language in your inbound marketing and with your ideal customers and pretty soon they’ll be lined up to order Grande-Misto-Backups and Pumpkin-SaaS-Lattes!

Why inbound marketing works for MSPs

Let’s begin with what makes inbound marketing great in general. It draws your target audience to you, so you don’t have to go to them. You become a trusted authority on your subject matter in your market. The concept is simple but there are some key points I see people often overlook.

First and most important to remember when you’re building your inbound marketing campaign is that you need to be continually adding to the content your audience is looking for. Your MSP’s clients are out there right now trying to find ways to make their businesses more efficient for less money.

If you’re not providing them the information they’re looking for, your competition will. Even if they aren’t actively shopping around for your services they are seeing articles, blog posting, and comments on their social media feeds. There’s a good chance you’re reading this right now because you saw it in your LinkedIn news feed. This is how inbound works.. 

We at Managed Services Platform feel that you should be speaking to the C-level executives who have the authority to buy your services. They probably care about virtualization about as much as they care what brand of light bulbs are in their office (not much). They only care how their business can make more money and expend less doing it.

Let’s make sure we construct our content with that in mind. We’ve ditched the sales pitch, now we’re ditching the tech talk. Here’s a great example:  The MSP 2.0 Service Offering in the 7C IT Management Framework. See how that provides lots of great insight a CEO could be interested in? Did you notice the most important part at the end? The often overlooked Call To Action!

If consistent quality tailored content is the first thing to remember for inbound, having a great call to action is the last. Everything else fits in between. Always think “where is my reader going next?” This is known as the buyer’s journey. Let’s define our buyer, then provide them a road map to not only finding us, but to find out what’s distinct about us, and hence to buying our services.

Follow these steps to be sure your inbound campaign is working:

1. Define your ideal client. Often your business will have several. Usually they are a CEO, CFO, CIO or COO. They have the purchasing authority to buy your services. Write content that speaks to them.
2. Define how they will go from finding your to buying from you. A typical buyer journey goes something like this: they see and choose to read an interesting article you published on linkedIn, then follow your call to action and subscribe to your blog. A few blog posts down the road they follow another call to action and download a checklist. This generates an email from you offering a complimentary report on their IT competitiveness quotient. Now you get to show them how your MSP can give them a competitive advantage in their market. You just found a new customer.
3. Create and distribute great content with blogs, emails, social posts, infographics, quality landing pages and a responsive website.
4. Always have a call to action that moves the viewer along the journey as you defined it.