Podcast That Bridges the Gap Between Business and Technology
I have long been a huge podcast fan. I listen when I drive, hike or while working out, but I had trouble finding something great to share with our MSP community. I told this to Adam Walter about a year ago and he took up the challenge. Now after hearing the 7th episode of his Humanize IT podcast, I decided to put out this blog for our audience to make sure the word got out. I love this new voice and narrative about how to differentiate, how to serve and how to run an MSP of the future. He has been interviewing the most forward thinking MSP leaders about how to make IT more human, how to drive great conversations and how to deliver business value to clients.
Check out the latest episodes here. Thanks to Adam for doing this for the community!
Based on Wikipedia Humanize means to "make (something) more humane or civilized." The main concept of the Humanize IT podcast is to bridge the gap between business and technology — a fun, educational podcast that will keep you relevant, maximize your value and help your clients see you as a trusted partner. In each episode, hosts Adam Walter, Skip Ziegler and other industry experts will show business owners, technology professionals and problem-solvers how to excel their careers with a new, more conversation-based approach to IT!
In this episode, they kick off the "Tales From Around the World" series. This first episode features Richard Bauer, an engineer from South Africa's own Cape Town. We hear about how they are being affected and some of the positive items they are seeing. From homemade pineapple beer to remote work strategies, we cover it all. Richard is a client of ours and a very forward thinking guy.
Tools allow us to either fix things more quickly or, if used incorrectly, break things in epic new ways. Bob Mohr joins them for a lively conversation regarding all the tools we amass over time. Whether you're a plumber or a technician, we all have tools we trust, and there are always new tools emerging that we must adapt to and integrate along the way. Bob is one of the mastermind behind our vCIO programs.
In this episode, they dive in and discuss the effects of disaster recovery and business continuity facing us today. With the current COVID situation, this is a particularly poignant topic, They'll help you overcome and adapt to changes so you can thrive during this time.
As a professional, it's your responsibility to not only deliver value, but communicate it, as well. If you don't take charge of your communication channels, you'll likely walk into a trap where you and your clients have differing expectations of each other. This podcast will help you ensure everyone is on the same page.
As business professionals, we often get so caught up in the latest and greatest technology that we forget how far we've come. In this entertaining blast-from-the-past episode, we talk about problems from a bygone era — the days of countless floppy disks and crazy hardware. No matter how advanced technology gets, it's always good to remember where we started.
Listen, subscribe and engage and again thanks for Adam, Skip and the Virtual-C team to made it happen!
Accelerate Your Growth with the new features just released
I am happy to introduce the sets of software features, updated templates, expert guide content and super specific programs to accelerate your growth! If your Account Management is not producing project revenues, your vCIO is not getting paid for advice, your Sales people are not getting leads or your cyber security services are not being sold then this release is for you! This is what we are going to cover:
- New Software Features for Growth
- Expert Guides for Growth
- Role Specific Programs for Growth
- Quarterly Sprints for Growth
1. New software features for Growth
One competitive advantage can be to build your MSP faster, design and communicate services better, create better client experience and become a high-value business partner.
Integrating these functions into one platform will generate momentum and even solving one bottleneck at a time keeps that momentum building. You don’t need to master everything all at once - just one at a time - then ride the momentum to reap the results as you move on to the next bottleneck.
New Features to Help Inspire High-Value Client Conversations
During the 2019 Q4 release we were focused on making you a master communicator as an Account Manager, vCIO, Technical Account Manager, Owner, Salesperson or even as a virtual Chief Information Officer.
Click on the circles!
Some of the major focus areas:
Sections: Organize your reports better into sections, open them for clients and focus on the content you are about to deliver or their decisions you want to support.
Questionnaire: Get involvement by conducting questionnaires up front. Use the results for an audit, checklist or a general progress report. More involvement leads to more commitment.
Calculators: Turning vague ideas into specific numbers, percentages or dollar amounts will facilitate communication. Use calculators with clients together for clarity and collect evidence to support their decisions.
Snapshot: Taking occasional snapshots will build a story about the problems they had, the solutions you provided and the growth they achieved with your help.
Integrations: Use more tools from your stack like BrightGauge, Office365 or SmileBack to pull out detailed data whenever you want to underline your message or show evidence.
Audience: Communicate to the right audience by selecting client side roles such as CEO, CFO, Office Manager or IT Coordinator. Log the meeting based on their seniority and collect Client Engagement Scores.
Infographics: Get your ideas across with modern visuals, interactive drawings, timelines, processes or charts. Customize your own graphics or embed auto updating partner infographics for changing content.
Scorecards: Simplify things with quick ratings. Gather user feedback, executive opinion or even the internal team's perception of scorecards. Send surveys or complete within the report and showcase scorecards.
New Features Help You Focus and Boost Productivity
The other big focus is on your execution efficiency with the 2019 Q4 release. There’s dashboards show aggregated information, a renewed Connectwise integration and many small workflow related UI enhancements to do more with less.
Click on the circles!
Standard Adoption Score Dashboard: Have a quick glance at the current rate of the adoption of your technology stack. You can set different scores for different segments and measure with attention to your diverse clientiele.
Growth Score Dashboard: Identify the amount of revenue in your deal pipeline and where revenues are stuck. Find out why you can’t move from planning to approval or why projects aren’t closed and billed.
Client Engagement Dashboard: Keep tabs on your high-value clients and be confident they all have regular meetings and are engaged. Even a substantially cheaper offer won’t undermine your value and they’ll stay.
Master Roadmap Portfolio: Forecast workload, budget and analyze projects together to be able to push certain initiatives further or close them faster to meet your resource allocation needs.
New Connectwise integration: Generate Connectwise opportunities and projects from the platform and keep those opportunities and projects synced with your PSA and your roadmap. This is a true two-way integration to sync account management with the service team.
Task Library: Simplify operations and communications by predefining tasks needed to meet the technology best practices. Connect library items to your scores and auto-generate tickets in Connectwise.
Multiple Seniorities: Assign different client-side roles to your contacts to make sure you have all types of conversations you need with the strategic, tactical and technical business roles.
Expanded New Templates: Updated templates for the Client Engagement Excellence Program are ready for you. A brand new Quarterly Business Review with visuals, dashboards and partner content will help you get inspired and build the report that will support your goals.
2. Expert Guides for Growth
Choose a role you want to explore further and watch the short video for inspiration. Expert guides will walk you through how to grow your business with that role.
How to grow with Account Management
Sell High-Value, standard projects with a proactive process - by Myles Olson
How to grow with vCIO
Drive Strategic Conversations and take on the execution by Adam Walter
How to grow with Technical Account Management
Develop Technology Standards and get all your clients to adopt - by Skip Ziegler
How to grow with Sales
Generate qualified leads and differentiate with client experience - by Mark Woldman
How to grow with cyber security
Make cyber security make sense to clients and offer packages they can buy - by Caleb Christopher
How to grow with Focus on Execution
Create structures for AM/vCIO, keep the team in focus and ensure accountability - by Elissa Kulczycki
3. Role Specific Programs for Growth
We are introducing role specific SMART goals for you to accelerate your growth with one role at a time.
- Account Managers: Generate $100.000 project revenues in 10 strategy driven QBRs
- How to grow with vCIO: Upgrade 3 clients to a paid stand alone vCIO package with $3.000 MRR
- Technical Account Management: Approve a Technology Roadmap with all key clients to adopt your Technology Standards
- Sales: Get in front of 5 high-value prospects and close 2 deals with $5.000 MRR
- Cyber security: Upgrade 10 clients to a paid stand alone cyber security package with $25/user/month
- Managers: Structure your Account Management and vCIO Operation with Client Engagement Score
4. Process for a Sustainable Growth
Growing your business can be done with quick high-intensity bursts. These results unsustainable growth with short peaks of results. We want to make sure you have a long term vision, break those to quarter long rocks you can deliver. Those rocks are focusing on one area, fix the bottleneck and keep it sustainable. Then you move your attention to the next goal but build on top of the previous efforts.
- Platform Orientation Meeting - if you have no membership yet, let's start exploring your goals and discover how the platform might serve your growth
- Growth Readiness Assessment - assess your readiness of growth and identify the bottlenecks holding you back preventing your breakthrough
- Smart Growth Action Plan - build a SMART goal and plan your next steps to achieve those goals with an action plan
- Execute your Rock - do it by yourself, pick an expert guide's education or engage with a 1-many or 1-1 program to make things change
- Repeat - go back to the drawing board, choose your next goal and get started on the next quarter....
Grow your enterprise one quarter at a time
Hope you are excited to get your MSP to the next level and start building your SMART goals and action plans!