The 1 Secret to Succeeding as an MSP

Maybe you are a managed service provider whose business has grown but who cannot get past a certain number of seats, no matter what you try in order to build the business. You gain a few customers here, but then you lose a few there. So what’s the secret? What do successful solution providers and MSPs all have in common?

According to Jim Alves, executive vice president of marketing and strategy at managed services platform provider Kaseya, all successful and growing MSPs have one thing in common. They all have a single person to focus on the business side and a separate single person to focus on the technology side.

“If it’s one person doing it, they cannot scale,” Alves says. “Focus creates success. I cannot focus on eight things.”

Alves says often sole proprietors will find themselves stuck because they are moving back and forth from the technology side to the business side, providing the service and then switching gears to figure out how to recruit new customers and redefine their business models.

“You can manage as one person, but what are you managing?” he asks. “You are always taking a step forward and step back as far as you can scale.”

And now is the time for providers to make their moves in the market, he says. That’s because the recession has meant companies are tightening up their IT budgets and looking for ways to save costs. If a service provider can present a compelling message about value to those prospective customers, selling managed services may even be easier during a recession, says Alves.

“Their business is going up because the value of what they provide has more meaning to the customer today,” he says. “Budgets are tightening,” but organizations still need the technology and resources to run.