MSP University Managed Services Blog

MSP University Washington DC Managed Services Boot Camp Day 1 Recap

What a great first day to kick off our Washington DC Boot Camp! Our streaming sessions were a big hit, with attendees joining us virtually from all over the world!

We are streaming recordings of each day during all 3 days of Boot Camp at: http://www.mspu.us/livebootcamp between 7am and 5pm EST!

Download the Agenda at: http://www.mspu.us/signup/boot-camps/default.aspx/#agenda 

This Boot Camp has been tailored to cover specific areas in 8 areas of IT solution provider and managed services practice improvement:

1. Leadership

2. Financial acumen

3. Organizational structure

4. Talent management

5. Marketing

6. Sales

7. Service delivery 

8. Vendor relationships

We started the day off with opening comments followed by the Keynote Presentation from our Platinum Sponsor Autotask, focused on growing product sales to increase business profitability.

During our sessions today we covered marketing, sales, increasing business profitability, leadership and how to effectively use DISC Behavioral Profiles for improved hiring, team-building and sales engagements. A big thanks go out to Kevin Brown of Kutenda, Anissa Harte from Business By Demand and our own Mark Sanders in delivering a great Marketing Expert Panel Session covering telemarketing, online, social media and website marketing. In addition, we received valuable presentations from Roy vanNorstrand of The Leren Group for his eye-opening session on Sales Compensation, Paul Dippell from Service Leadership for his captivating session on increasing your IT practices’ net profitability, Ron Pennell from Foothills IT on his Healthcare IT Overview and Lee Ellis from Leadership Freedom for his inspiring session on Leadership. 

Special thanks go out to our expert video team from Varvid (www.varvid.tv) – once again delivering our CEO Track in amazing HD quality streaming for our online attendees. Focused on video services for the IT channel, make sure to visit them for all of your video needs.

Our day ended with a great Cocktail Reception courtesy of Autotask, followed by their Board Room session.

We kick tomorrow off at 8am with a Keynote Presentation from our Platinum Sponsor CompTIA at 7am in the main room, so log in early and be prepared for our second full day of training and education, where we add our Service Delivery and Healthcare IT tracks. We have our Cloud Expert Panel queued up with panelists from Own Web Now, Evolve Technologies, Autotask and Clear Center, followed by a presentation from Cornerstone Backup focused on how to make Managed Services sales easier by introducing a backup and disaster recovery solution to your prospects and clients and Own Web Now’s session on how to make a profit selling cloud services.

Remember to check out MSP University’s new Mobile Page for a valuable surprise just added at http://m.mspu.us! 

Invite your staff and colleagues to participate in our Boot Camp virtually at www.mspu.us/livebootcamp!

Erick Simpson
MSP University

Check out our FREE live training schedule here
Visit our Mobile Site here
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Attend MSPU's Washington DC Boot Camp Online Starting Wednesday, September 1st at 7am EST

Can't attend our Washington DC Boot Camp with NEW HEALTHCARE IT TRACK in person? Join us from your PC!

Are you interested in:

• Increasing net profits?
• Developing effective marketing strategies?
• Understanding current and future health care IT investments?
• Pricing and positioning Managed Services on value to maximize revenue?
• Learning sales techniques that dramatically improve sales success?
• Understanding the health care IT sales process, including customer pain points?
• Discovering the most effective ways to create and deliver Managed Services Agreements
• Creating rock-solid project plans and using them to effectively manage your projects to come in on time and within budget
• Training your Sales Engineers in a clear step-by-step process that walks them through effective discovery, solution design and proposal creation
• Understanding what you need to know before you outsource
• Understanding market drivers and hurdles to healthcare IT investments?

Then join us as we stream our IT Solutions and Managed Services Sales & Marketing and Service Delivery Boot Camp directly to you on September 1st - 3rd, 2010!

You have many choices when it comes to deciding which industry events to attend - but at MSP University we're doing something completely different by streaming our Washington DC Boot Camp - providing you valuable education and training that you can immediately put to action!

We've built 4 amazing tracks for you and your team: 

• TRACK 1 - IT SOLUTIONS AND MANAGED SERVICES CEO OPERATIONS
• TRACK 2 - IT SOLUTIONS AND MANAGED SERVICES SALES 101
• TRACK 3 - IT SOLUTIONS AND MANAGED SERVICES DELIVERY
• TRACK 4 - IT SOLUTIONS AND MANAGED SERVICES MARKETING
• TRACK 5 - HEALTHCARE IT - NEW TRACK ADDED!
• MARKETING, CLOUD AND HEALTHCARE IT EXPERT PANELS

Click here to Join Our Washington DC Boot Camp Streamed Live!

Sessions run from 7am to 5pm EST September 1st-3rd, 2010 

Erick Simpson
MSP University
Check out our FREE live training schedule here
Visit our Mobile Site here
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Join MSP University FREE for all things Managed Services

Targeting and Tracking Website Visitors for Managed Services Providers

Managed Services Providers are in a unique position where they not only provide certain services to clients but also benefit by applying the same techniques within their own businesses. Clients who utilize Managed Services count on their provider to offer a full range of services from security and data backup to managing their website.  Successful businesses understand that having an online presence is necessary to remain competitive.  Managed Services Providers must not only know how to promote their own businesses on the web but also provide the same services to the clients with whom they have achieved Trusted Advisor status - true business partners that entrust them with numerous facets of their business for improvement. 

Despite the fact that millions of people use the Internet daily to find products, services, news stories or other tidbits of information, many of these users do not know exactly what happens when you enter information into a search engine.  The same applies to business owners and managers who may not have to time or interest to learn how visitors get to their website.  This is where knowledge in search engine optimization (SEO) comes in handy.  But before you tackle SEO, there are other important factors to consider.  Before you can reap the most rewards from your website, you must first know a few things about the people that are visiting your site and the people you want to visit your site.  After all, if the wrong people are getting to your website, neither party benefits.  Ask the following three questions before you focus on SEO:

• Who is visiting your website? 
• Are the customers visiting your website the type of customer your sales team would try to sell products or services to?
• Are there changes you can make to your website that would weed out the inquiries that are not resulting in sales?

Basically, you want to determine if your website design and content are attracting the right visitors to the site.  The goal is to provide potential clients with information needed to make an informed decision as to whether or not they can benefit from your services, and provide additional supporting information (such as testimonials and case studies) that can build credibility in these prospects.  

How are people finding your website?

Another important piece of information that you will need to know is how visitors are arriving at your website.  This can be accomplished in a number of ways:

• Ask new clients how they found your website.  You are specifically interested in learning what keywords or phrases they entered into a search engine to find your company.
• Ask established clients what words or phrases they would enter into a search engine to find your company. 
• Use online analytics tools such as Google Analytics to track how people are finding your website. 

Once you have this basic information you are now in a better position to focus on SEO.  Experiment with different keywords or phrases and track the results.  Your goal is to use the information and tools at your disposal to target qualified customers and position yourself so those customers can easily locate your website.

Erick Simpson
MSP University
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MSP University helps solution providers succeed...period.

3 Tips To Increase Sales For Managed Services Providers

 
Each business model has different strategies to increase sales, which in turn improve the bottom line.  Obviously Managed Services Providers work in a very specific market, therefore strategies to increase sales will also be specific to that market. It always makes sense to heed the advice of your peers within the industry when they discuss what strategies work well for them in increasing sales.  By consulting with your peers and paying close attention to what is happening within the industry you are more likely to pick up helpful tips that will improve your sales results.  Here are a few industry tips on how you can boost sales as a Managed Services provider.

Keep it personal - In an industry that is focused on technology it is often easy to overlook the importance of building and maintaining strong personal relationships. Because of the fact that most everyone (including the busy business owner) spends more time communicating via email or in other less personal ways, the importance of face-to-face or even telephone conversations can be overlooked.  If your business transactions are so streamlined that little or no direct contact is needed, there is no opportunity to establish a personal relationship with your client.  When a personal relationship is lacking there are often issues, concerns, questions or other problems that end up being unresolved, which can lead to your client seeking another provider who will address their needs on a more personal level.  Conversely, once a good personal relationship has been established, the lines of communication are open and both parties can build a close strategic partnership, leading to improved client satisfaction, retention and increased opportunity for the provider. 

Stay atop current trends - Whether or not you are personally on board with the cloud, there is no doubt it provides an opportunity which cannot be ignored.  While some Managed Services Providers are on the fence regarding cloud computing, almost all have either acknowledged or in some way or another adjusted their business strategies to include cloud computing.  By staying atop current trends you can provide your clients with the most up to date technology while still providing for their basic and advanced business needs.  Being in a technical industry requires MSPs to incorporate current trends relating to technology or risk falling behind the pack.

Simplify Agreements - There is no doubt that many small business owners who would benefit from Managed Services are not currently using these  providers due to the fact that they don't fully understand the deliverable or its service delivery process.  To make it easier to bring new clients on board, review your current Agreement to determine if there is any way to simplify its terms and conditions.  You might have to modify its language to appeal to individuals who are not technically savvy, or allow a more flexible Agreement for clients that are on the fence regarding their need for Managed Services.  You don't want to limit your client base by having an Agreement that is intimidating or not easily understood by a broad range of individuals.

Erick Simpson 
MSP University
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MSP University to Offer CoreConnex' Corelytics™ Financial Dashboard and Business Analytics to Members

MSP University is proud to announce our newest strategic partnership with CoreConnex, whose Corelytics Financial Dashboard receives data from a company's financial accounting systems and provides a secure, hosted platform to display financial performance, key indicators and forecasts. When utilized by an IT Solution or Managed Services organization, the Corelytics Financial Dashboard empowers the organizations' leadership with information to calculate their true cost of service delivery for each of their lines of business, along with margins and profitability. See my previous posts here and here regarding the importance of calculating the profitability of every one of a provider's deliverables, including service desk.

Read the Press Release here

We feel this partnership will provide MSP University members with the business intelligence, benchmarking metrics and financial management tools necessary to run their practices by the numbers and improve their net profits.

Click here to find out how to attend our next 3-Day Boot Camp Sept. 1st-3rd in Washington DC with NEW HEALTHCARE IT TRACK ABSOLUTELY FREE (a $2,995 value)!

Erick Simpson
MSP University
Visit our Mobile Website here
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