How to help executives make strategic decisions in the bathroom
The two most prevalent trends in client engagement are the increased frequency and remote delivery of meetings. We see, however, another trend that may surprise you, and its impact is as significant in your client meetings as in your sales meetings.
The power of the traditional printed collaterals, pdf reports, and personal influence is fading from future decision-making processes. This trend shows that your client executives and prospects might be making strategic decisions sitting on the toilet….
I do not want to bury the lead. Our tool is used to prepare, deliver and follow up important client meetings. We measure engagement with shared reports and we’ve just found out that the majority of follow-up items from client meetings such as QBR Reports, Strategy Reports, and Sales Proposals are opened on mobile devices.
This shows not just a surprising shift in engagement, attention span, information processing and decision making in general, but should send a wake-up call for every client-facing employee: the way to win deals, approve projects and upgrade contracts is not just doing the same thing in zoom.
Every account manager, vCIO and sales executive should rethink how their processes can help them succeed not just in the next 30-60 days but the years to come.
Here are 6 quick tips to think about in this new era of decision making:
1. Pro setup is not a luxury
At Managed Services Platform we’ve been performing ONLY remote meetings. We have first-hand experience with closing new clients more easily and showing off our services with confidence when the quality of our media - visual and audio - is non-amateur. Even your client’s trusted technology company loses credibility if your setup looks like home-movies brought to work.
- Pro lighting front (led lights for $150-400)
- Pro 4K webcam ($150)
- Pro Microphone ($100)
- Pro Background (well lit greenscreen or photo backdrop)
Ask us in chat and we’ll send you a good setup Amazon shopping cart example.
2. Add more engagement to remote meetings
Sales and client meetings are all about human influence. Shifting this experience to remote meetings can introduce a suite of barriers to the communication. Often the sound is choppy, body language doesn’t track, and your audience feels disconnected. Here are a couple things you can do to keep the realism in your remote meetings:
- Send an agenda ahead so people can prepare… even if it’s in the meeting invite
- Send any pre-work the other party needs to do in advance
- Ask questions frequently through the meeting
3. Follow up with a short video
Yes I know you can record a session with zoom and send it to the client. But this is like expecting them to read the 40 page proposal you'd have sent them in the past. This ain’t gonna fly. Let’s record a quick video with your webcam and put that into the report like it was designed for it.
- Use https://www.vidyard.com/ or https://wistia.com/soapbox which will help you record your video inside your browser, share the screen and share with a client in a minute
- Keep it under 5 minutes long
- Summarize the findings of the meeting and the action items
- Make sure anybody who wasn’t an attendee can understand the video (as we hope they pass it onto a teammate for follow up)
4. Create collaterals to promote quick decision making
Now your executive is likely watching your video while cooking dinner with the kids jumping around, or while walking the dog. You can’t count on deep concentration from your audience, and they want a shortened decision-making process. What you need them to do is send an email back with the word “Yes”.
- Send a complete report as a reference only
- Ask one question in one email right in the subject line so they can answer yes or no
- Put only the additional information like parts of the report that are related to the question into the email
- Do not get wordy - send a clear goal and calls to action
5. Always close the loop
Never finish a meeting without setting up the next one. This is Business 101 but in this remote work era calendars are full and chaotic with mixed family commitments and disrupted routines.
- Use an online scheduling tool and open it during the meeting
- Don’t wait until after the meeting or let them pick later (they won’t)
- Make sure you set the agenda and the time for the meeting before you leave
6. Increase the meeting frequency because meetings are cheap!
Imagine doing a meeting remotely with 1 minute to set up and 1 minute to close. You no longer need to travel 30 minutes, park, get in the building and find a coffee. Conducting quick 15 minute follow up calls is easy and cheap. These meetings generate focus on you and on the decisions they need to make. So let’s set up quick sessions to give them this focus time.
- Increase the meeting frequency with short sessions
- Set up recurring weekly sessions until the decision is made
- Put in the effort to use the meetings wisely so you’re not wasting anyone’s time
Even if you’re still doing client meetings or sales meetings things have been changed fundamentally. These are quick tactical tips that you can expand on. It’s just as important to polish your remote meeting style in the new era to ensure your clients make the decisions you’re professionally advocating.
5 Steps to Run Effective Client Meetings Remotely!
Without the ability to meet in person and present your ideas, it may be difficult to keep your clients engaged in IT support services. Spending on IT may not be seen as essential when your clients are struggling. But when has technology ever been more relevant to the success of business and the economy?
How will you communicate your value and the relevance of your services or are you prepared to risk losing MRR right now?
In speaking to our members we have learned what makes a client meeting engaging while working remotely. I put together a quick guide for you outlining the most effective features they have been using in remote client meetings.
1. Gather information effectively
Share the audit / assessment widget of the report through a link with your technicians. They’re able to complete the current state and make notes so you have a better picture of the status of your clients’ environments. The Service Review widget also helps your techs quickly go through services and highlight issues in a simple RED/YELLOW/GREEN and notes format. You can send a scorecard survey to your clients to gather information from key stakeholders. This way you get more buy in for the meeting as you involve them to the conversation early on. We also recommend importing all current projects and opportunities from Connectwise to your project roadmaps before the session.
2. Brief before the online session
Recording a quick screencast with your webcam turned on is a simple but very powerful way to engage your audience ahead of the meeting. This also saves a ton of time. You can embed the video in a content widget on the top of the report and then use the public share function to send it to your clients by email. Make sure you hide all sections and widgets which are not necessary to share prior to the meeting. Do not overwhelm your audience. You can protect, rebrand, personalize and track engagement by using a link shortener service.
3. Present the report through the online meeting
If clients are not involved during a remote meeting, they will start multitasking, checking emails and becoming less engaged. Use the report’s interactive functions (scores, project roadmap, infographics etc.) to make this more interactive. You can use the scorecard functions just like “webinar polls”. Send the scorecard questionnaire links to them during the session which they can complete as you talk. Then show them the results to get input and more engagement.
4. Generate action items
This is more critical than ever to get actionable outcomes from the meeting to ensure accountability on both sides. Use one content widget to have the agenda items in front of you, and list all the action items they need to do and your team will do after the session. It might be obvious but facilitating online sessions and taking notes can be sometimes challenging. You can find a task creation ability on the top of each widget. It allows you to keep the widget’s content on the screen and add the tasks at the same time.
5. Follow up effectively
Share the meeting recording after the session, but the best way is to record a quick debrief video right after the meeting and embed it into the report. Then you turn every quick note into specific action items you can share internally and with the clients. This way everybody understands the context and also you can see who watched the video and for how long to get some feedback about the engagement. Use the Task widget to summarize the next steps and export them to PSA tickets. If you use connectwise you can sync the complete project roadmap with Connectwise opportunities and projects.
By following these steps you can turn your in-person QBRs, Audits and Strategy meetings into effective, productive and profitable remote sessions. You’re the hero to your clients’ businesses right now!
How to transition to High-Value Business Partners during the recession
The narrative is about to change now. With the recession coming only high-value and proven partnerships are going to last. All fat is going to be on the chopping block. High-value strategic relationships with technology providers will be critical for all organizations. In this blog I teamed up with Rich Anderson to probe some thoughts on the opportunities and conduct a practical walkthrough with inspiration on how to actually do it.
1. What are the opportunities?
This crisis has been demonstrating to executives worldwide how technology readiness, agility and remote work are key to business. The expectation for service providers is shifting quickly from "give us computers to work from home" to "help our people adopt applications quicker, be more tech savvy and grow a culture of ready remote work." Here are some tips to transition to the high-value partner model as quickly as possible!
- How to shine as an MSP during the crisis
- Why adoption of technologies is now a must for clients now
- How to take credit if your clients were prepared
- Why IT can be again a visible and important business resource in the future
- How to show a plan and become a guide of clients
- How to redefine the narrative and become a business advisor
- How to communicate with different types of clients through the crises
- How to flatten the curve internally to cope with the overload of work
- How to become a coach, mentor and guide
- What is the role of leadership
- How to create a contingency plan for your MSP
2. How to make this happen?
Epic effort came from our team, members and Virtual-C to make this COVID-19 Remote Work a reality. Rich is sharing his process and thoughts on how to take leadership and clarify communication with the COVID-19 Remote Work Readiness Self Assessment Grader and Audit Report.
- How to generate a mini questionnaire to gather input from clients and prospects quickly
- How to qualify clients to run an in depth audit to create a technology roadmap to make them ready for remote work
- What are the key points of the readiness assessments?
- How to gather input and evidence from your tech team
- How to gather input and evidence from their users to strengthen your case
- How to fill the project roadmap with valuable projects
My Conclusion:
This is the time not to brake, but to push the pedal to the metal. Let's seize this opportunity! In spite of the current unprecedented stresses this is your time to shine and lead your clients through the crisis.
If you are able to assess your client's current position, communicate that effectively, then generate a vision and plan for them to move into the future, then you are recession-proof, and your business can only come out of all this stronger!
Times Are Tough, We Hope These Changes Help
We are currently living through a period of uncertainty we'll never forget. We are going to go through this together. Like many of you, we are trying to do what we can to help our customers and the larger community navigate this challenging time. Here are details on plans that will hopefully help, as well as a sincere ask from us for your input on what more we could do.
We are adding free tools, upgrades, solution sets, partner help, new functions, community access and self-help materials to help you to recession proof your MSP! Here are the details
Actions We are taking
Adding free tools: Businesses of all types and sizes are finding themselves in the position of having to move whole portions of their operation online. To help your clients adapt, we have made our paid Grader functionality with Self Assessments and Lead Magnets completely free. (available now)
Adding free upgrades: At this time of change, you need to keep in regular contact with your customers and stay connected to their communities. Therefore, for the next 90 days we add the Client Engagement Scoring and Account Management module to each member to let you proactively plan your client meetings and measure engagement. (from 1st of April)
Adding free Solution Sets: To flatten the curve for your clients and yourself, you need to proactively engage your clients and give them confidence that their infrastructure is secure and able to scale with remote work. We created a COVID-19 Remote Work Readiness Self Assessment and a COVID-19 Remote Work Audit with 24 Remediation Project Templates last week. (available now)
Adding partner help: You need programs that free up your time instead of giving you extra work. We have designed programs with partners to make your MSP recession proof without you doing the heavy lifting:
- A complete, well designed, out of the box vCIO Framework
- A unique program setting you up with qualified leads and sales meetings with a completed Needs Assessment report
- A complete Productized Cybersecurity Program that helps you monetizing on cybersecurity
All programs have been accepting early adopters in limited amounts, please contact me for details. (available now)
Adding new features: We added new features to offer you focus during this time of distraction and uncertainty. These are the three functions to support you and your team:
- the dashboard functions to see your reports, project pipeline and activities in a single page (available now)
- a weekly personalized email digest explaining your growth progress, activities and performance (available now)
- Personal Calendar Sync to Client Engagement Activities (available now)
Adding Self-Help Materials: you do not have time to learn and slowly implement. You need to execute things quickly. We have been updating the Help to be very detailed, we apply in-app tours and explainers for features and functions. We’re extending our weekly live training with COVID-19 Remote Work related tools. (continuous updates)
Adding an Online Community: Connect to others and learn from each other. We are launching the Managed Service Community with Expert Partners. Existing peer groups have been using the community for a while, now we expand this to all members.
Please, We Want to Hear From You
What we’ve just laid out is a start — our start — for how to help keep businesses moving and growing. But we know that every business’ circumstances are different, and we want to know more about the challenges you’re facing.
Please share your questions, feedback, and suggestions with us by replying to this post. (I will read every single one of your emails).
We wish you the best and look forward to better times.
Managed Services Platform team
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:
- A STRONG delivery of distributed workforce strategy
- Technology that’s aligned with business initiatives
- 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?
Remote Work Readiness Insights from MSPs
Thoughts from our Covid-19 Remote Work Readiness Webinars
We're certainly living in unprecedented times right now. With many businesses looking to stay productive while sending staff home to work, there's never been a time when technology has been so crucial to the economy. Now is the time for MSPs and IT Solutions Providers to leadership with technology solutions that will save their clients.
With the help of our Member Community and Virtual-C, we put together a few tools to help MSPs clearly articulate the value of their remote work technologies and support. We see it as 3 primary areas of focus:
- Effectively communicate with your clients that there are remote work solutions which will allow them to keep their businesses running. This is done by auditing your clients current remote work readiness.
- Create an action plan, with clear deliverables and defined steps that both the clients and your team can understand and follow. This is done by creating a roadmap of projects for deployment.
- Manage your teams resources and triage clients needs using readiness self-assessments. This is done by letting clients answer a short survey to gather insights into their perceived needs so your team can focus on those in need.
We hosted a couple of webinars and asked approximately 100 MSPs their thoughts on remote work readiness from their clients' perspective, and their own. Here's what we learned.
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In looking at remote work readiness from the clients' perspective, MSPs were split between feeling their clients were unsure or feeling somewhat prepared with help.
From the MSPs perspective, it was overwhelming that there is a great deal of work to do in getting the clients working remotely.
IT will undoubtedly be an essential service throughout this difficult time. By uniting our communities and empowering businesses to survive, you will be the hero.
How to guide your clients with remote work Technology Solutions
Communication is everything now. You can leverage two tools to communicate clearly your clients and prospect's readiness for remote work. A COVID-19 Remote Work Readiness Audit and a COVID-19 Remote Work Readiness Self Assessment help regain your relevance to your clients and prospects. Demonstrate clarity, direction and professionalism with clear communication.
You and your team are likely overwhelmed by the fact that your clients are looking for guidance, leadership, advice and quick fixes to enable them to work securely in a remote environment. This is an opportunity for you to step up, to lead and engage your clients. You’ll either shine warmth, comfort your clients and show how well you prepared them for situations like this or make it clear what opportunities they missed to create a secure and remote work culture in their organization.
Upsell your clients with strategic Quarterly Business Reviews and IT Strategy meetings
1. Client Engagement Use Cases and Goals
A. Clients who are prepared and good to go
Your goal is to make sure you comfort the client’s various stakeholders. They will then be able to spread the information internally that their service provider has made all necessary preparations to let them work remotely. This is your chance to engage them and demonstrate all the little pieces needed to get together for this experience. Further, even if everything is good, you can highlight some areas of potential improvement such as policies, continuity plans or security awareness.
B. Clients who are not prepared
It might be the result of you dropping the ball or more likely that the client did not want to invest in their infrastructure. What matters is to clear the action items and be able to remediate the issues as soon as possible. You can install Slack quickly, but they have to learn to work in a remote collaborative environment. Your duty is to communicate and set proper expectations and a timeline with them.
C. Prospects are open for a talk
All crises engender some opportunities and there is a chance some churned clients now would value your work again, or net-new prospects can be found. The goal is to be able to exhibit leadership, confidence, and professionalism. The assessments can help you to gauge them and to compare their scores with your clients’ scores to show the added value your services provide.
Again we know this is an urgent situation but that’s the exact time that clarity, leadership, and professionalism can be the best message to all stakeholders.
2. COVID-19 Remote Work Readiness Audit
This is a complete Report with a questionnaire, scoring, 23 remediation projects, and project roadmaps. Here is a sample report.
This is going to help you to audit clients, show them a score with a breakdown, and follow up with an action plan.
This will help you:
- Communicate how prepared clients are to work remotely
- Speed up the communication internally and externally
- Create a project roadmap and set deployment priorities with clients
- Remote work projects are templated and can be exported to Connectwise & Autotask for quick delivery by your team
Completion time around 15-20 minutes per client; produces a report supporting a remote meeting.
3. COVID-19 Remote Work Readiness Self Assessment Explained
This is a web-based mini-survey with automated scoring and PDF report generation.
This is something you can easily send over to clients and that they can complete alone. They’ll get the results immediately and contact you for further actions. Streamline your communication and provide guidance on what needs to be done to work securely from home.
This will help you:
- Speed up the communication internally and externally
- Assess many individuals and clients easily (even prospects through social media) with the Self-Assessment Grader
- Quickly generate education reports that can be delivered and updated online
Completion by your clients and prospects takes 2-3 minutes and produces an educational and scoring PDF. As this is an online survey you can put this onto your website with a lead magnet or post it to social media.
You are going to be able to manage this tribulation of chaos with confidence, leadership and professionalism.
4. Structure and topics of the Assessments
We have created five Categories to drive conversations with clients.
A. Remote Work Readiness
The score shows how well the organization is prepared for working remotely. The first part is the readiness of the Remote Work infrastructure such as home computers and networks, the second part is the available applications to perform high-quality remote work.
B. Remote Work Capabilities
The score shows how well the organization is prepared for working remotely. The first part is the culture, best practices, and performance by working remotely. The second part is ensuring all critical aspects of remote work are covered with policies and that employees are trained for them.
C. Network Readiness
The score shows how well the organization's infrastructure is prepared for the demand of the majority of employees working remotely. One aspect is the central internet connection's capacity to be able to handle the increased two-way traffic on the corporate network. The other aspect is ensuring the internal network infrastructure doesn’t have bottlenecks to block the overall performance and reliability.
D. Business Continuity Plan
The score shows how well the organization's business can feasibly operate without disruption. One aspect is the readiness of the IT infrastructure to be able to operate. The other is related to the processes, education, awareness and communication capabilities.
E. Enhanced Security Measures
The scores show how well the organization is ready to work remotely within a secure environment. One aspect is to increase the individual user's security while working from home offices and on not-so-reliable networks. The other aspect is to enhance the network's security for potential cyber security incidents.
The COVID-19 Readiness Audit has detailed descriptions and assessment for all 10 sections of the 5 categories. The COVID-19 Impact Self Assessment has only 10 questions qualifying to the different topics.
5. The Process to get the Audit and Self Assessment
Follow the instructions here:
A. Existing Managed Services Platform paying clients
You do not need anything - just add the solution set to your account.
If you are an existing client, log in to the portal and follow this link and add the solution set to your account. Then you can start using the content right away.
B. If you are Virtual-C / Sea-Level / IT Nation Evolve / TAG Member
You do have a 3 client free account based on our Strategic Partnership. You do not need a paid account for up to 3 clients.
You have the account already, log in to the portal and follow the link and add the solution set to your account. Contact us on the chat so we can add the additional general tool onboarding videos to your account. The solution set is free and you can use it for up to three clients.
C. You are not a member yet
If you do not have account with us, contact us to make an appointment.
6. Set up and Use the Assessments
Using the COVID-19 Remote Work Readiness Assessment Audit
Here is a walkthrough how to use the Readiness AuditUsing the COVID-19 Remote Work Self Assessment
Here is a walkthrough how to use the Self Assessment
Thanks for all the hard work and contributing members. We are sending you updates and welcome any feedback!
Why the better MSPs work the less perceived value they have
For a while after our session with Sea-Level something was bugging me. We pondered a conundrum in this seminar: why can’t MSPs not become the victim of their own success? Why does a smooth service have to lead to disengaged clients? How can the MSP remain the hero not justhen the client has problems in their day-to-day operation but even when those problems are gone and the technology just works, and they stop noticing the value of the services?
After many 1-1 discussions we came up with an answer. The issue comes into clear view from a distant overhead, as does the solution. Now having been able to create a model that explains the problems, the solution is far less difficult to manage.
We are going to break down the problem into 3 stages each with a brief explanation.
Develop and operate a scalable and structured
account management and vCIO operation in 30 days
The Model of Perceived value and Maturity
We are going to use a little model here. On the vertical axis you see the level of the Client’s IT operation maturity. The more mature the IT operation, the fewer problems will arise. This is where MSPs commonly focus their energy to ensure reduced ticket noise and a smooth IT operation. The operation maturity is climbing not only on the MSP’s side but on the client’s side, as well.
On the vertical axis you can see the Client’s Perceived Value of the IT services. As you see you are a victim of your own success. The better IT you provide to the client the less value they perceive from Technology Services.
This model is not about the net value that they got but their perceived value. There are three distinct phases along the journey. Let’s tackle one at a time.
Phase 1.: Constant IT Problems
This is the phase in which most MSPs have made the initial sales deal. The prospect had low IT maturity with minimal in-house or outside resources. They were fed up with the problems. When their MSP came on board perceived value of the services skyrocketed. The MSP was able to bring order, standardize operations and improve the quality of their work.
In this case the value was entirely in Technical Services and was very obvious to them. Nobody had to sell the value. Everybody has it laid out in front of their relieved eyes.
Phase 2.: Reduced IT related issues
Now after years of your hard work it seems that IT is no longer on the board meeting agenda as it no longer generates issues. Everybody is working efficiently, the discussions with the MSP become “business as usual”. Some problems arise occasionally but are mostly within development projects and aren’t emergency issues. Complacency grows and clients start to see the MSPs more as a service provider rather than a hero.
Now in this phase, the value is even more clear from the MSP’s perspective. The work is harder, more processed and very high maturity. But this is exactly what prevents problems from germinating and if the client has no metric to evaluate the MSP other than “problem, issue resolution” then the perceived value will start to fall. Cruelly, their net value is rising while perceived value declines.
To maintain your well-deserved perceived value to the client in this phase is no longer a technical service-related task, but communication-related. This is the phase when the MSP needs to establish a proper Account Management / Technical Account Management practice to be able to communicate the value of the services. These are the technical reports, and roadmaps to be able to show to the client the hard work the MSP is actually doing. Nothing fancy, just let them see what they are paying for. Without introducing Account Management, the perceived value will diminish. That is the beginning of accruing an Account Management Debt.
Phase 3.: No IT related issues
The next phase is where very few MSPs can increase the perceived value without stretching the boundaries of the initial Managed IT Infrastructure Contract. In this phase, the IT infrastructure is not just good enough, but probably overshooting their need. Just think about how much advantage most aren’t taking of their Office 365 subscriptions outside of email.
The client’s IT maturity cannot be raised more without them actually implementing applications and leveraging the opportunities of technology. This part is hard as now the client’s willingness will essentially decide what’s next.
This is the place where churn becomes likely even with very satisfied clients. Why? Because they start shopping for “cheaper” alternatives. The majority of the developments have been done and no more technology projects are on the horizon. They start feeling less value in their services.
This phase is no longer just a technical and communication related one. If the MSP cannot connect the application of technology to their business then the client will not see value or opportunity within IT. If the IT only keeps firewalls and emailing with Office 365 then it will not be seen by them as a real business relationship.
The MSP has to establish a business conversation with a client to be able to stay relevant. The client management team should believe in the future and the opportunities that technology can bring to the table. This requires a true IT consultancy mindset and services. Without a business consultancy, digital transformation or business vCIO mindset and services the perceived value will stagnate at best.
Your Decisions:
1. Treat Clients differently based on their maturity: Check your client base and determine at which stage you are with them.
- If they are in phase one, you need to push awesome technical solutions.
- If they are in phase two, you need to add high-touch account management to be able to communicate the given service value.
- If they are reaching phase three, then brace yourself…you need to introduce a new way of thinking and sets of services to generate business value outside of the technology focus. It’s that or create many mechanisms to lock them in even as their perception of value declines.
- Defensive Strategy - shoot for the clients on Phase 1 and 2 then monetize the opportunities along the way. Once they’re reaching Phase 3 do whatever it takes to keep them even with a declining engagement
- Offensive Strategy - do not even try to sell to Phase 1 clients but focus your efforts to catch Phase 2 clients. Invest in development services for Phase 3. (vCIO, Application Management, Cyber Security Compliance etc.) Then go out to the market and steal clients from MSPs playing the Defensive Strategy. How? Simply offer the client’s executives “business value” with IT strategy planning sessions and Digital Transformation services.
Conclusions
The trends are obvious.
- Fewer and fewer small and medium businesses will be in the Phase 1 stage.
- There will still be a great deal of clients in Phase 2 but the competition will be very fierce here.
- More and more clients need higher-level IT services - it’s a real emerging market with little competition. Here the challenge is service development and a consultative sales process.
None of the options is easy to manage but all are predictable from the big picture standpoint.
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!
5 Practical Ways MSPs Can Prevent Churn
We asked last week during our webinar with Sea-Level Operations: What are the symptoms of Account Management debt? Low perceived value, communication breakdown, and churn were included in 100% of the responses. Most interestingly 77% of the time churn was mentioned without prompting. During the session we analyzed this situation and identified the crucial methods to prevent potential churn. We are going to highlight the 5 major activities Account Managers can do to accomplish this.
STRUCTURE, MANAGE AND AUTOMATE YOUR ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT AND VCIO PROCESESS
1. Creating a Business Context around Services
The first priority for Account Managers would be to connect the IT services to their business goals. This can happen with IT Strategy planning meetings when the major focus is on the client’s business goals, issues and challenges. Properly applied to their IT Roadmap these findings can be quite effective.
Most MSPs make the mistake of proactively creating and presenting these plans to the clients without actually interviewing them. This is like a doctor writing prescriptions without a diagnostic exam. It is not enough that the MSP knows what to do and what needs doing. The client needs to feel understood! That’s what makes Strategy Workshops critical.
Churn Prevention Factor: 10 out of 10 by making you a strategic partner rather than a technical vendor.
2. Value Demonstration by Service Definitions
MSPs offer very complex and technical services bundled into specific packages. Back when the value proposition of an MSP was “peace of mind” for the client and the client had problems, the bundled service was an easy sell. Of course now that MSPs make their clients complacent and “problem-free” the pains are gone and clients are second-guessing the value of the given services.
Detailed Service Definitions and regular mandatory reviews help to remind clients that problems seems distant BECAUSE of the huge amount of work, professionalism, and services delivered. These Service Definitions though should not be phrased technically, but in a way that a business owner understands that one key point: they are paying fair wages for these services.
Churn Prevention Factor: 8 out of 10 by getting everybody on the same page regarding how much professional work goes into having a “hassle-free IT” operation.
3. Value Demonstration by Excellence Models
The other communication issue with clients is a symptom of the ever-changing technology landscape and the client’s obligation to make their IT investments aligned with newly required quality. This idea is lost easily without being able to see the big picture. Asking to fund a firewall upgrade will definitely be viewed as an “unnecessary expense”.
Excellence models and scores can help define what “good” looks like and how “excellent” looks better in any given area. The MSP can create an excellence model for Office 365 / IT Infrastructure / Cybersecurity / Applications and so on. The excellence model can be reviewed through an internal audit where the MSP goes through the relevant criteria. The result is presented to the client as a score, which is easily referenced and compared over time.
Now going back to the firewall issue. By auditing the client and showing 80-90% “green” scores all over the place you’ll instill confidence that their MSP is delivering value. On the other hand showing a potential “red” score with 40% will highlight a bottleneck that can be remedied with an updated firewall. Now the expense is not a waste but a conscious and wise decision by the executive to turn that red light green.
Churn Prevention Factor: 8 out of 10 by illuminating every issue from a big picture perspective.
4. Consistency by Proactive rather than Reactive Meetings
I learned the big difference between being proactive and reactive from Steven Covey. Being reactive is the easy and mentally lazy default approach. Like if the phone rings we pick up, if an email arrives we open. Proactive things are often not urgent but important and we have to act upon them. Reading a book is proactive as the book never rings and never notifies our inbox. Reading a book is never urgent but can be vitally important. The same can be said about quality time with clients.
Clients will initiate calls to which they expect you to react. That’s easy, but it’s also easy to neglect to proactively prepare an agenda, generate a report and spark conversation. Consistency means you put the important ahead of the urgent and you carve out the capacity and time to regularly meet with clients regardless of current issues. Bringing topics to those meetings will help you avoid getting mired in operational items and focus instead on their business objectives as you direct rather than respond to topics. Further if clients don’t see consistency within your interactions they’ll be hard pressed to believe in your service delivery consistency either.
Churn Prevention Factor: 7 out of 10 by demonstrating consistency with proactive meetings.
5. Contact All Stakeholders As MSP’s
QBRs are full of tactical elements such as ticket reviews, service delivery issues, upcoming technology updates and so on, and key stakeholders are often absent. Business owners and executives are not interested in the details, but without having a platform to meet with them the MSP will lose communication lines with the key decision-makers.
This is why forward-thinking MSPs have been designing meetings just for executives. Office Productivity Audits, IT Leadership Workshops or Application Implementation Projects are ideal for the decision-maker audience. IF an MSP cannot separate the tactical from the strategic the majority of the conversation will be reactive/tactical rather than proactive/strategic.
Churn Prevention Factor: 7 out of 10 by demonstrating consistency with proactive meetings.
Conclusion:
You do not have to do everything immediately. Getting out of the Account Management Debt is a process. But this process also has quick wins. See where you are the weakest and fix those first.
I strongly recommend the webinar we made with Rex, Rich, Jason together walking through these topics.
