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4 min read

How does the current definition of "IT" hurt your MSP business?

By Denes Purnhauser on Sep 9, 2014

There was a State of IT Budget Report - a microscopic view of North America IT spending in 2014 from Spiceworks (RMM tool) during the weekend. It was all about analysing IT expenditures based on a 450 sample size "IT Pro" survey.It was a good report, well-thought out and executed, but there was something bothersome to me that wasn’t the fault of Spiceworks: the general industry definition of scope of IT, and because this is the industry definition, it’s usually our clients’ as well.

Topics: Managed Services Providers IT Management Business Building for IT Companies MSP
5 min read

Monetizing Client Apps and SaaS Solutions the Smart Way

By Denes Purnhauser on Sep 7, 2014

If you’re like me, you’re often evangelizing cool applications, services, and vendors to your clients. You have a cool feature on your Todo application, or you were able to integrate your CRM with LinkedIn, or you just collaborated with your team with an awesome project management tool. We spread the idea because we are advisors by nature. The question is how can we capitalize on this habit? How do we create service offerings around SaaS-based applications?

I hope you have read our monster blog article about the business model changes of the MSP. In this model there is an item called "Marketplace" in the partnership section, there are revenue streams called "Marketplace Commission" and "3rd Party project management," and there is an activity called "Resell Vendors, Applications."

The idea here is quite a common practice among IT managed services providers - finding a problem on the client side and helping them with an application. After deploying, manage the usage, subscription, and processes of the application. IT companies are mostly infrastructure providers, so they do these types of activities but in an ad-hoc way. What’s new here is the proactivity and a defined structure for these types of services.

Topics: IT Sales Person Managed Services Providers IT Sales Business Building for IT Companies MSP Implement New IT Services Cloud Services
2 min read

Webinar Takeaways on Selling IT Security and Compliance

By Denes Purnhauser on Aug 15, 2014

It was a really engaging talk with Steve Rutkovitz CEO of Choice CyberSecurity. He is a very successful MSP practitioner specializing in IT Security and Compliance.

We were talking about MSP challenges, strategies, IT consultative sales processes, IT security and compliance opportunities and partnerships, and I learned the following:

Topics: IT Sales Person Managed Services Providers IT Sales Business Building for IT Companies MSP IT Consultative Sales NIST Cyber Security IT Security
5 min read

MSP Game Changer IT Sales Ideas From The Book - The Challenger Sale

By Denes Purnhauser on Aug 13, 2014

I have been dancing around the intention to read a book called "The Challenger Sale" but kept not having the chance. There’s no shortage of titles to choose from regarding sales, and it can be know where to put one’s limited reading time, but last week Steve Rutkovitz a peer MSP CEO, said that this is a must read. He’s a smart guy and I gave it a try....
 
To be honest, that was one of the greatest books I have ever read in years especially in B2B sales. It was so refreshing, straight to the point, and so aligned with what we’re trying to do. So I decided to share my takeaways from the book by implementing them into the MSP sales process.
 
This book is not just ideas, concepts, or opinions. These are battle-tested facts supported thorough research with 6,500 samples. So enough of my accolades - let’s check out some thought-provoking concepts - in three big things:

Topics: IT Sales Person Managed Services Providers IT Sales IT Consultative Sales Win New Clients
6 min read

Why are MSPs struggling with IT sales these days?

By Denes Purnhauser on May 29, 2014

Yes, even the MSP industry seems to be growing, and the majority of indicators are positive. While every statistic from analytics has varying reports of industry growth, all of them are very optimistic.
 
However, when we talk to individual IT managed services providers with fewer than 20 people the picture does not seem so rosy. They’re reporting problems with IT sales, cloud adoption, and transferring time & material (T&M) contracts to IT companies.
 
The IT world has undergone fundamental changes, and clients are not knocking on managed services providers' doors anymore. The most common report is the struggle with sales, 
Topics: IT Sales Person Managed Services Providers IT Sales MSP Win New Clients
6 min read

The 3 building blocks of a remarkable MSP sales process

By Denes Purnhauser on May 12, 2014

I’ve been talking with a fellow MSP entrepreneur recently about sales. He’s been suffering the inability to find the right someone for MSP contract sales, so he or the other directors are saddled with the sales work.

This is actually the usual situation among IT managed services providers... I see it all the time. The directors, CEOs and company presidents, are doing the sales for MSP services and neglecting their bailiwicks...developing the business.

The problem however is not HR, but the nature of the operation. Usually, when you find yourself unable to hire someone, and the high level staff are stuck doing it, you only see that symptom and not the root cause. In this case, the operational problem is causing the HR problem. The process is so complex that it narrows your field of potential hires. Only those with the most experience can manage it, and those people are most needed in other roles.

Topics: IT Sales Person Managed Services Providers IT Sales MSP Win New Clients
3 min read

Research: World of Virtual CIOs on LinkedIn

By Dr Peter Torbagyi on May 12, 2014

I was interested about the vCIO, vCTO, and Virtual Executive types of services. So my colleague Peter did some research on LinkedIn on the topic. Keep in mind everything herein is based on LinkedIn publicly accessible data...it’s interesting but there’s a limit to the depth of research you can do this way.So in general, I found that clearly the Virtual CIO industry is driven by the US. I can confirm this from personal experience, that American MSPs are much more comfortable with this term than European or even Canadian IT managed services providers.

  • since 70% of vCIOs are hired by companies with under 200 employees, and 9% to large organizations (10,000+), there must be some local support need for interim or part-time high level IT executives.
  • when looking at companies offering vCIO services, 97% have fewer than 50 employees and just over half (55%) have a staff roster of under 10.
Topics: vCIO Managed Services Providers Virtual Chief Information Officer Business Building for IT Companies MSP Virtual CIO CIO IT Client Engagement
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