MSP University Managed Services Blog

Live From The 2009 Kaseya Connect User Conference

What a busy couple of weeks it has been! I'm here in Las Vegas for the 2009 Kaseya Connect User Conference, with only a day home between travel from MSP University's 3 Day IT Solutions and Managed Services Sales & Marketing and Service Delivery Boot Camp in Baltimore, MD and here.

Held at the beautiful Four Seasons Las Vegas, this year's Kaseya Conference has sold out with over 300 partners in attendance, in addition to some excellent Sponsors, including MSP University (a Kaseya Managed Services Resource Partner), Autotask, CompTIA, ConnectWise, Intel, MSP Partners, Roaring Penguin, Spam Soap and Tigerpaw.

I had a chance to speak with Kaseya CEO Gerald Blackie earlier, and he hinted at some special announcement during the conference.

Check out these posts from our friend Joe Panettieri at www.mspmentor.net:

Video Demo: Kaseya on the iPhone
Kaseya COO Discusses SaaS Strategy
Kaseya CEO: On-premise Software Here to Stay
Kaseya Signals ERP-Like Shift In Managed Services Market

If you happen to be at the conference, make sure and stop by MSP University's booth and say hello - and enter to win a FREE Boot Camp registration to our next 3-Day training event in Orange County, California...

Erick Simpson
MSP University
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MSP University helps Solution Providers succeed...period.

Another Incredible MSP University Boot Camp Is In The Books!

What an amazing 3 days we have just experienced in Baltimore, Maryland with over 100 of our MSP University Solution Provider partners and an amazing group of Sponsors and Presenters that helped us deliver our best Boot Camp yet!

We started our Boot Camp with a full day covering transformation strategies to take IT Business Owners and transform them into CEOs. Covering HR, hiring, compensation and operational strategies, the highlight of was Paul Dippell's session on Key Performance Indicators and what to measure and modify to increase profits. Paul, CEO of Service Leadership Inc.; MSP University's Benchmarking and Analytics Partner (www.service-leadership.com), covered the Benchmark provided to all MSP University Members prior to attending this Boot Camp and how to understand its details in order to take action to improve metrics and increase profitability.

The next 2 days were focused on 2 tracks: Sales & Marketing and Service Delivery, with the attendees broken into 2 groups to benefit from these respective focus areas. Our Sales & Marketing track covered executing the 7-Step Sales Process broken down into 3 appointments to sell IT Solutions and Managed Services, with heavy emphasis on role-playing each phase of the Warm-Up, Qualifying, Presenting the Proposal and Managed Services Agreement, Overcoming Objections and Closing the Opportunity. As mentioned, each attendee to this track executed a tremendous amount of role-playing, coached by MSP University Partner Support Managers and judged by their fellow attendees.

We kicked off the Service Delivery track with a deep dive on Windows Server 2008, EBS and SBS2008, delivered by Microsoft training Guru Stephen Deming. Those of you who have had the opportunity to see Steve in action during a Microsoft live training event know what a treat it is to watch him work. Once the attendees learned what they needed to know about this next generation of Microsoft's Server platform, it was time to get into Service Dispatch, Problem Management, Service Desk, NOC and overall Service Delivery Best Practices. These sessions were delivered by me personally, and were conducted in a great participatory manner, keeping the slides to a minimum, and discussing more interactively the attendees' own internal processes, and comparing them against best practices for efficiency, effectiveness, profitability, consistency, scalability and client satisfaction.

A special treat during lunch on the second day was MJ Murphy's (Business Development Manager, Microsoft Local Engagement Team) passionate, electrifying presentation on Microsoft's Local Engagement Team's mission to help partners build community presence and increase local business success with their help. If you follow my blog regularly, you'll recall my respect for Microsoft's efforts with the Local Engagement Team and may have viewed some of the webcasts MJ and I have delivered and posted at www.mspu.us/courses.

On the final day of the Service Delivery track, our good friend and Virtualization Guru Dave Sobel, President of Evolve Technologies (www.evolvetech.com) and SMBVirtualization (www.smbvirtualization.net) delivered and informative presentation on how to price, position and maintain Virtual Environments for maximum profit. Dave has authored a book (which includes a forward by another well-respected industry author) and DVD training series on the subject .

On behalf of all of us at MSP University, I'd like to take a moment to thank our Partners, who devoted 3 days during Memorial Day Weekend to spend time with us improving their businesses, as well as all of our Sponsors and Presenters:

ARRC Technology www.arrc.com
Autotask Corporation www.autotask.com
Axis Business Solutions www.axisbusiness.com
eFolder, Inc. www.eFoldering.com
Evolve Technologies www.evolvetech.com
Expetec Technology Solutions www.expetec.com
Kaseya www.kaseya.com
Microsoft Corporation www.microsoft.com
Own Web Now Corp. www.ownwebnow.com
Service Leadership, Inc. www.service-leadership.com
Synergy Global Services www.synergy.gs
Tigerpaw Software www.tigerpawsoftware.com
Watchguard Technologies www.watchguard.com

Our next MSP University Boot Camp is scheduled for August 12th-14th, 2009 in Orange County, CA. For information on how you can attend absolutely FREE, visit www.mspu.us.

Erick Simpson
MSP University
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MSP University helps Solution Providers succeed...period.

Considerations For Addressing Your Clients' IT Maintenance Needs

As you build your business on selling managed services, there are several important decisions that must be made that will affect your organization and its level of profit.

If you are providing managed services to clients, one of your biggest decisions will be whether or not you plan to handle all of the service delivery internally, or outsource some of these responsibilities to a third-party resource. To help make this decision, there are some considerations you will need to evaluate regarding your organization first.
 
Remaining Flexible to Client Needs
Some of your clients will prefer to only pay for reactive repair work, rather than investing in a proactive maintenance program paid for on a monthly subscription basis. While it is important to understand your clients' needs and make accommodations for them in a way that is effective for both you and your loyal client base, it will be up to you to illustrate the value of proactive maintenance for these clients - at least to the point of convincing them to pay for a low-cost network monitoring, patching and updating "monitoring only" service. This will allow you to provide a basic level of maintenance and help identify potential issues before they become work-stopping outages, while allowing you to bill for any work required beyond the  fee you charge for this basic service. In addition, you will discover up-sell opportunities by reviewing your service's monitoring reports.

Reasons To Outsource
If your organization does not have the internal capabilities or resources to dedicate to proactively monitoring, patching and updating your client's networks, you may consider outsourcing this responsibility to another fulfillment partner or vendor - especially if this decision is more cost-effective than providing these services yourself.

Third-Party Outsourcing Considerations
When you are seeking relevant companies to partner with, evaluate your clients' and vertical markets' particular compliance requirements, as these may narrow your choices of fulfillment partners from a geographic perspective, as well as in other areas. While outsourcing service work to countries outside of the United States may be the right cost-effective choice for you than the alternative, in some cases other considerations may apply, and as the global IT outsourcing opportunity grows, U.S.-based organizations are becoming more competitive in this area.

Prepare for Growth
If you want to increase your profit margins, you must be prepared to make difficult decisions that fuel growth in your business while reducing costs. You can achieve this growth by delivering services through your own resources in-house, or by creating a solid working relationship with third-party resources.

For more information on fulfillment partnering for service delivery success and profitability, download FREE sample chapters of our best-seller "The Guide to a Successful Managed Services Practice" here.

Erick Simpson
MSP University
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MSP University helps Solution Providers succeed...period.

Motivate Your Staff To Think Like Entrepreneurs

Managed Services providers understand the importance of workforce moral.  When employees feel that they are valued members of the organization, they take pride in their position and perform at a higher level of proficiency and efficiency.  You can increase the success and productivity of your company by encouraging your employees to think like entrepreneurs.  The following steps will get you started in building a successful team:

1. Promote Problem Solvers
2. Embrace Failures
3. Reward Ingenuity
4. Motivate With Money
5. Create Teams
6. Lead By Example

The first five steps are part of incentive programs found in many companies that are used because of their proven results, and are known by most business owners and managers.  Managed Services companies that foster a positive, motivating and rewarding work environment have employees who are happier and who perform at a higher level.

The key to increasing the success of your company and the effort of your employees is to remember the 6th step.  If you want to take your employees to the next level of entrepreneurial thinking, you have to lead by example.  It is human nature to emulate those around us who reflect our own morals and values.  Therefore employees will be more likely to think like the owner of the company if the owner connects to them on an emotional level, and demonstrates the kind of behaviors and traits expected of the employees.

To encourage and empower your employees to put 100% into the company, you must provide an environment that demonstrates compassion and that considers employee input when making decisions.  Business owners who have great people skills and the ability to relate to their employees on a personal level will have employees who are motivated to peak performance – and a Managed Services business that outperforms those who do not function with these principles in place.

If you want your employees to feel ownership you must be able to read and respond to the mood of your work force.  Employees who show up for work just to get the job done are not going to be as productive as employees who actively think of ways to improve the company.  For this reason you should remain approachable and encourage employees to come to you with ideas, complaints and concerns. 

Owners must realize if they expect employees to think as if they owned the business, then they must also be empowered and equipped to make decisions.  If your employees do not have the ability or authority to follow through with their entrepreneurial ideas, they will be less inclined to put the extra effort into projects.  To ensure your employees have the right tools to make tough decisions, provide training courses which improve business skills.  By educating your employees, you are not only investing in their future, but the future success of your managed services business as a whole.

Get the tools and resources to educate yourself and your employees to become a best-in-class solution provider and MSP by joining MSP University.

Erick Simpson
MSP University
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MSP University helps Solution Providers succeed...period.

Security Lessons for MSPs

A recent disclosure of a data breach by Heartland Payment Systems; a leading payroll processing company that handles 100 million transactions per month for 250,000 businesses, offers a number of lessons for MSPs in keeping their customers protected from similar problems under their watch.  Heartland Payment Systems' data was accessed via hackers who installed keylogging software and a sniffer program that grabbed credit card details during a millisecond of the transfer process when this information was not encrypted.

Heartland Payment Systems is not a small company – in fact, its purpose is to assist banks and businesses with payment transactions and to protect their clients from the very problems that they themselves experienced. If a company as large as Heartland Payment Systems can experience a major security breach – what can you do to keep your clients' data safe?

Security measures are becoming state mandated for both enterprises and SMBs, with Nevada and Massachusetts leading the pack by mandating; among other things, that companies encrypt the financial records containing personal data of all of their residents stored on any portable device, including laptops, cell phones and flash drives. As the requirements for mandating security measures become clearer, more states are expected to follow suit.

As a result of higher security requirements, small businesses that previously managed their own IT departments may seek out the services of Managed Services Providers to help them meet those requirements.  For businesses already using MSPs, they'll expect higher security.

Here's what you can do to position yourself as a highly secure provider of Managed Services:

1. Make sure you spend time staying on top of the latest technology and regulations in the area of data protection. As you know, IT is constantly evolving, and you need to keep up to date with the evolution of data protection in order to understand and provide it effectively.

2. Always consider potential gaps in security throughout the entire lifecycle of data.  Consider data at the bit level – from the source all the way to its final destination in order to understand your clients' data security needs.

3. Assess your own current state of security and look for ways to constantly improve.  Seek out a fulfillment partner with the proper specializations to help you assess your own and your clients' risk levels if you do not possess these competencies internally, and develop remediation and ongoing testing strategies to stay in front of security threats and maintain compliance in these areas.

Erick Simpson
MSP University
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MSP University helps Solution Providers succeed...period.

The Need for Change: SaaS as a Managed Service Deliverable

Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions are billed to clients on a subscription basis, similar to Hardware as a Service (HaaS).  It's common for SaaS to be mentioned along with Managed Services, as though they are one and the same – but for many MSPs used to putting their hands on physical hardware and selling tangible projects, SaaS has met with some resistance.  But SaaS isn't going anywhere - in fact, experts predict that it will become the primary method of software delivery and use for the majority of individuals in the future. In fact, you are probably a SaaS user already!

Reselling and maintaining SaaS solutions for your clients is no different than selling and maintaining a hosted email solution - in fact, hosted email is actually SaaS. Other popular SaaS solutions you have probably heard of include Microsoft Online Services, Quicken Online, Salesforce.com and Google Apps. It can be argued that Facebook and Twitter are also SaaS solutions.

SaaS solutions reduce overall challenges and complexity with hardware and software installation, maintenance and integration. Today's SaaS solutions are designed so the SaaS vendor maintains the hardware and is responsible for ongoing software functionality, upgrades and availability, while the MSP's relationship with their clients and vendors is one of facilitating process and change management and training, as well as configuring SaaS solutions to meet their clients'unique needs, and becoming their single point of contact for incident management and service requests moving forward.

Many solution providers fear the onset of SaaS - and for those whose primary client relationships are rooted in reactive, break-fix or transaction-based services - they should. In order to build long-term, value-based relationships with clients, providers' services need to become a critical component in their clients' overall businesses, and not simply a reactive incident or project outcome-focused resource. They need to initiate positive organization-wide change through technology focused on business outcomes that create synergies across all business units for their clients. Only by evolving as a true business partner in this manner will providers be able to break free of a hardware-centric value proposition and position SaaS solutions properly to help their clients achieve their business goals.

Erick Simpson
MSP University
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MSP University helps Solution Providers succeed...period.

Why Your Organization Needs a Sales Manager

In order for every business to succeed there comes a time when you have to increase or decrease your staff to fit the needs of the organization.  Basic management 101 teaches us that one person can most effectively manage no more than five people directly.  For this reason it is important to delegate responsibilities among your staff as your organization grows, or to fuel growth.  In many cases, even small organizations will benefit from hiring or training a person to fulfill the position of Sales Manager to oversee the sales department, once it grows beyond the owner's capacity to manage directly (remember the 5-person rule).  

The following  are just a few of the responsibilities of the Sales Manager:

• Establishing goals and creating incentives to reach those goals for the sales department
• Developing, coordinating, measuring and tracking all sales sales activity, the sales funnel and forecasting sales and sales cycles over time
• Developing new sales and marketing ideas
• Managing the sales process for following up on marketing activity, including direct mail, email, event, news release and company website lead inquiries
• Training and motivating sales staff
• Participating in events such as lunch 'n learns, business breakfasts, mixers, etc. as required
• Fostering close relationships with vendors, fulfillment partners and distributors

The Sales Manager role is performance-based, just as all sales positions should be. Acquiring a seasoned Sales Manager can make it possible to initiate and realize real change in the organization in areas of growth and profitability.

When determining how you will compensate your Sales Manager you must take into consideration the time the Sales Manager will not be able to directly make sales due to managing the team, creating new sales strategies and developing relationships with vendors or other partners. You should come up with a compensation package that includes a commission for your Sales Manager based on the overall sales of the department as well as bonuses as the sales team achieves their objectives.

Does it make sense for the manager of the sales department to receive a lower compensation than any individual sales person he manages?  This makes sense, as the sales person is the individual actually executing the sales activity and closing business directly with clients.

For more on the role of the Sales Manager and how to hire and compensate them for success, download some sample chapters from our best-selling The Best I.T. Sales & Marketing BOOK EVER!

Erick Simpson
MSP University
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MSP University helps Solution Providers succeed...period.

How To Use Postcard Marketing Effectively

Once you have determined the products and services that comprise your deliverables, and the vertical markets you will focus on marketing to, you will want to sit down and write a compelling marketing message for each of them. That way, each of your marketing messages is specifically designed to illustrate the benefits of each of your deliverables in in compelling terms that your target prospects can relate to.

If you are going to use postcard marketing as one vehicle among many to touch your prospects with and deliver your message, you will end up with a dozen or more different postcards, with one deliverable's message per each postcard created!  This is a good thing, as it will help your prospects visualize you as the expert, and a Trusted Advisor. Remember - the more times you touch your prospects, the higher the probability of closing business with them.

How do you create the visual design of your postcards?

You have a few choices for creating the actual visual design for each of your postcards. You can join MSP University as a Premium Member to choose from hundreds of different postcard options and messaging in our unlimited Collateral as a Service (CaaS) program, design them yourself from scratch, purchase a software program or subscribe to an online service offering templates; or hire a designer.

We recommend you pick one design and use it throughout all of your direct mail and email marketing pieces for consistency. This is why we have created not only postcards, but line cards, direct mail letters, email templates and even PowerPoint presentations with solution-focused messaging and consistent visual design elements available in our CaaS offering.

How do you send your postcards to your prospects?

If you think mailing your postcards is a time-consuming and labor intensive task – think again!  ExpressCopy offers a premium postcard service.  You can create an account for free, upload your postcard graphics and marketing lists, and decide when to mail the postcards.  We recommend selecting oversize glossy postcards, as they will draw more attention from your prospects.

ExpressCopy currently has a 20% special offer to get you started: Get 20% Off Your Direct Mail Campaign.

Not only does this postcard service save you time and effort, but it also reduces your overall costs, when you factor in your labor costs, printing, labels, toner and postage fees.

Tip: when uploading your mailing list, include your own address so you receive a postcard from yourself.  That way you'll know exactly when your prospects are receiving their postcards, too. 

MSP University's Collateral as a Service

If the idea of creating the design and content for your marketing collateral overwhelms you, consider joining MSP University as a Premium Member to access our Collateral as a Service (CaaS). We regularly design and develop entire solution and service-specific marketing campaign collateral including HTML email templates, direct mail letters, line cards, postcards and PowerPoint presentations to increase your prospects' trust and familiarity with you. All you need to do is add your company contact information and branding, and you're ready to market! This is only one of the many benefits available to Premium MSP University Members. Click here for more information on CaaS.

Erick Simpson
MSP University
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Join MSP University FREE for all things Managed Services
MSP University helps Solution Providers succeed...period.

Keys To Sales Success: Writing Effective Employment Ads

When your company is ready to begin building its sales force, you will naturally assume the most important first step is to hire quality sales professionals. However, there is a critical step before you can hire that can make or break your attempts to find the best candidates – writing the employment ad.

You will need to hire all kinds of qualified people, so there exists a challenge for you to write the right kind of ads for a variety of employment opportunities. Two of the more common categories of staff you will hire as you grow involve technical and sales talent. Each group will be motivated differently when choosing their next employer. Here is a brief overview of what influences each group when seeking an employment opportunity . Notice how each group differs in priority.

Technical Staff Motivators

1. Challenging technical work
2. On-going training opportunities
3. Problem-solving and solution delivery based on teamwork
4. Appreciation for work contributions
5. Monetary incentives

Sales Staff Motivators

1. Monetary incentives
2. Utilization of sales abilities
3. Being of service to others

When creating your employment ads, you must convey the right message to reach to best potential candidates. If your company is looking to hire competent sales staff, it is critical that the advertisements for employment state job specifications that appeal specifically to sales staff, and in the right order. Money is usually the primary motivator for a seasoned sales professional, and rarely do they need to understand every specific detail about the products or services your company sells in order to be motivated to contact you to follow up on an employment opportunity. Unlike technical staff, sales staff do not see the company in black and white terms, and are generally prepared to jump right in and get to work. The best will understand that relationship-building rapport with clients and customers is imperative and they are not intimidated by not knowing every detail of your business before beginning sales activity.

There are other more basic components of successful ads for sales staff. Here is an outline of the additional sections that should be covered in all employment ads, as well as requirements that are staff-specific.

• Company Name and Location
• Job Status (Full time/Part time)
• Relevant Work Experience (5+ years experience)
• Job Category (Sales)
• Career Level (Experienced)
• Job Description (Several short paragraphs on abilities, qualities, responsibilities, duties in priority of the target group)
• Minimum Skills Required (Short, bulleted list)
• Benefits (Include salary range, commissions, bonuses, and other benefits)
• Method of Contact Preferred (list company name, department, email address, fax or phone number)
• List of Application Requirements (resume, references, company application)

By covering all of the basic components of the ad in addition to the candidate-specific areas, your employment ads will help attract the right people for available opportunities. Creating an effective ad will encourage the most qualified candidates to seek out your company's opportunities and enable your human resource department to have access to the right people to continue building the optimum sales team and staff.

For more on creating effective employment ads for sales staff, compensation plans, and the interview questions to ask to make sure you hire the right sales professional, along with a solid HR hiring process, download some sample chapters from our best-selling The Best I.T. Sales & Marketing BOOK EVER!

Erick Simpson
MSP University
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Join MSP University FREE for all things Managed Services
MSP University helps Solution Providers succeed...period.

How to Use Email Marketing Campaigns Effectively

More than 40% of all email sent each day is considered spam – which results in 12.4 billion spam emails sent each and every day! 

Despite these statistics, when used correctly, email marketing campaigns are a very efficient and cost-effective method of getting your message out to your prospects, and can be utilized as one of your marketing touches in a multi-touch marketing campaign that includes direct mail letters, postcards and telemarketing activity.

In order to get permission to email prospects, you will need to collect email addresses through “opt-in” methods – they can sign up for your newsletter from your website or blog, enter an email address in order to download a white paper, case study or when requested via a phone call. These are all legitimate methods for gathering email addresses and obtaining permission to send your prospects email.

Email Templates

Using the marketing collateral you designed previously for postcards and direct-mail campaigns, you will duplicate them in the form of an HTML email template.  The reason you duplicate the same message and appearance across different media is “Marketing 101”: the more impressions you make on the prospects, the greater their awareness and trust of your organization is, and the more marketing touches you execute, the better your chances of closing business.  Having a consistent theme and marketing message across all of your collateral per marketing campaign is far more effective and memorable to prospects than whipping up a new marketing message each time you mail a postcard or send an email for a specific campaign.

Email Delivery and Measuring Your Results

If your PSA or marketing solution does not provide marketing campaign management capabilities, you'll want to sign up with a service to help you manage your email marketing lists and campaigns.  Autoresponders will allow you to keep track of the people you are marketing to, categorized by groups if necessary, schedule delivery of newsletters and marketing messages, and give you a way to measure the effectiveness of every email you send out to your lists. There are numerous automated electronic message management programs available online, including Constant Contact (www.constantcontact.com) and MailChimp (www.mailchimp.com).

These 3rd party electronic message management solutions make email marketing list management simple, and provide the ability to blast out thousands of emails quickly, and with only a few mouse clicks. A real benefit to using these solutions is their capability to collect contact information submitted to your website and automatically compile it into your email marketing list. They will even email you when someone new joins your list.

This provides the ability to create all of your HTML email and Newsletter content quickly and easily, and manage opt-outs and bounces automatically. In addition to inviting prospects to join your mailing list via your website, newsletters, case studies, white papers, etc., you can also place a link in your email signature, inviting prospects to sign up for your newsletters or mailing list, increasing your potential opt-in rate.

One of the best features of creating and sending email through a management solution is that you can view an online report of all emails that were opened, and which hyperlinks were clicked, so you can gauge the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns.  If you can't measure the results of your marketing efforts – you won't know how to make improvements to increase your sales and potential revenues. 

MSP University's Collateral as a Service

If the idea of creating the design and content for your marketing collateral overwhelms you, consider joining MSP University as a Premium Member to access our Collateral as a Service (CaaS). We regularly design and develop entire solution and service-specific marketing campaign collateral including HTML email templates, direct mail letters, line cards, postcards and PowerPoint presentations to increase your prospects' trust and familiarity with you. All you need to do is add your company contact information and branding, and you're ready to market! This is only one of the many benefits available to Premium MSP University Members. Click here for more information on CaaS.

Erick Simpson
MSP University
Subscribe to my blog here
Subscribe to our Newsletter here 
Join MSP University FREE for all things Managed Services
MSP University helps Solution Providers succeed...period.