Take Your Managed Services Practice Up A Notch

By Maurice Saluan, Senior VP of Sales, Zenith Infotech

What do MSPs need to do to take their practices to the next level? Do you agree with the "own the office" suggestion?

Yes, "own the office" is always a good approach, but normally, depending on the size of the client, this may not be possible. Smaller clients are more apt to allow you, the MSP, to "own the office". It may be more appealing to these clients to have one source. If that's the case, make sure you are positioned to do so.

MSP's can partner with organizations like themselves who have expertise in the growth areas or add people so that this expertise is brought in house. Additionally, you can build your own solutions by aggregating components from different vendors or selling a completely bundled solution from a limited number of sources. There is no "one size fits all," but you can have a few alternatives available given the customer type you are dealing with. The key to continued growth, cloud or no cloud, is to make sure that your offerings align with the market needs.

As you move up in the client size, they tend to look for those partners who are "specialists" in certain areas. With this in mind, MSP's must focus their efforts on the specific needs of the marketplace they serve and make decisions on what they will go after. Ideally, these can be bundled in the recurring revenue/service MSP model.