Growing Your IT Support Business

Growing Your IT Support Business by Becoming a Managed Service Provider

If you are reading this, chances are you’re the owner of a small to medium sized business (SMB) quickly reaching the limits of what you can do with your current break/fix model and you are keen to know where you can go from here. That or you’re more than happy with your break/fix business and are curious to know what exactly we think is wrong with it. Either way you’ve come to the right place. To begin with I’d like to start by making it clear that there isn’t necessarily anything “wrong” with break/fix and to a certain extent the idea of waiting for something to be broken and then fixing it makes perfect sense. For the most part it is easy to sell; if something is broken marketing by social media it needs fixing, it’s that simple. However the problem with break/fix arises when you want to take your SMB, happily working away fixing problems as and when they occur, and make it grow. How exactly do you scale a service that you can’t predict? The truth of the matter is there is only one way to scale a reactionary business model like this; hiring more staff. You need to do this to ensure you have enough hands on deck if your entire customer base suddenly needs “fixing” at the same time. This in turn leads to larger premises, more visits to site and essentially higher costs. But what if none of your customers need fixing? Then what happens? You need to pay all the staff you have on hand. This is where the MSP business model comes into play. As an MSP it’s your job to be pro-active; rather than waiting for something to break and rushing to the rescue, social media marketing you simply keep an eye on things and tackle possible breakages before they arise. (For a retained monthly fee of course). This model is far easier to predict; if you know that you have X number of clients paying $X a month for you to keep their IT services running at optimum, then you can begin to assess your business requirements. This will make your business much more sustainable and far easier to scale. On the surface making the switch from break/fix to MSP is easy. You simply install your RemoteManagement software on to the devices to be monitored, set up checks and reports and you are ready to go. The most difficult thing about is going to come when you have to explain to your clients why they should start paying you monthly and up front instead of only paying when it is needed. The last thing you want is to lose all your existing customers. For this reason it is important to help them grasp the benefits of a service designed to actually protect their computer systems rather than just patching them up.

How To Use Email Marketing To Grow Your Managed Service Practice

Email marketing helps an MSP nurture its customer and prospect list by educating the customer about thought leadership and best practices for small business IT (e.g. blog article on cloud computing or white paper on remote backup). This also helps to inform prospective customers about customer wins and company capabilities. Additionally, email marketing adds momentum to your marketing campaigns for webinars, seminars, free offers and other lead generation programs. With the popularity of social media networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, many say email marketing is dead. However, in today’s competitive social media marketing strategy climate for managed service business, successful companies must do both. Here's why: It takes up to six marketing “touches” to get a managed service suspect to qualify themselves as a managed service prospect. Examples of marketing “touches” include: telemarketing call, Google search, white paper download, Facebook “like”, an email open or a click on your email marketing newsletter. Marketing via email will help you get more from other marketing activities, reinforces your brand and provides another vehicle to get your message out there. Let’s face it, everyone absorbs information in different social media marketing plan ways. Some may unsubscribe to your email, while some will open and “read more.” Some will actually click through to your offer. Not only is email marketing cost effective, but it also lets you educate your customers and prospects on the benefits of managed services and other thought leadership topics, while staying “top of mind” when they need IT support the most. Email marketing can get the phones to ring. However, you must tread carefully and consistently if you choose to market via email. Here are some steps to help you get the most from your email list.

How To Increase Your Profits As a Managed Service Provider

Companies spend 80 percent of their IT budgets on keeping their basic infrastructure running. However, that's dead money because it doesn't contribute to the growth of the business. That's why small and midsize businesses, with constrained IT budgets and limited internal IT expertise, are increasingly focusing on those IT initiatives that drive the value of the company and are delegating the remaining tasks to service providers who can perform these tasks more efficiently. Such tasks include managing networks, providing hosting services, running software applications and email services and delivering IT help desk support. As a result, social media marketing companies the managed service providers (MSPs) market, already around $55 billion in 2010, is poised to reach $86 billion by 2016 according to research firm Visiongain. The barriers to entry for becoming an MSP are low and many VARs and distributors in the technology and networking industry are looking to become MSPs to forge tighter relationship with their clients, as well as enjoy a continuous revenue stream. But most VARs and distributors struggle to make the transition, and many new entrants to the MSP business struggle to grow. The key to becoming successful in the MSP business requires creating the right value added services that clients need and then having the operational capabilities to deliver them cost-effectively. All while meeting or exceeding contractually committed service levels. However, most MSPs don’t invest enough social media marketing services in their business processes to differentiate on one or more of more of these capabilities. In addition, while such proficiencies will enable an MSP to sustain existing customers and reduce churn, they still need to find a way to scale intelligently and profitably—to serve more customers, add new services or expand regionally, while managing costs and improving service levels. In this article, I will share a simple framework that shows how MSPs can leverage information technology to build differentiated operational capabilities that will help them to successfully compete and scale their business.