I get it. You don’t want to lose, upset, or annoy your clients. They might have signed up with you 10+ years ago and promised them an all-you-can-eat solution. Back then, this might have worked fine for your operations. But now, you’re confronted with more challenges, especially with growing demand and need for protecting data, devices and backups. The all-you-can-eat model does not work well here.
Why?
First, if your clients don’t understand or know what is in your security stack,
Second, if they don’t understand a value behind your security, you might find that they’ll second-guess how you’re actually doing it. If you’re not continually showing them how your security solutions are meeting current threats, they may perceive your security solution as a complete black box, leading them to question whether its effective.
MSPs are WAY beyond all-you-can-eat service
We are beyond the time when all-you-can-eat is even an effective or viable offering. With prices increasing and bottom feeders trying to cut corners and make it seem like your offerings are completely unreasonably priced, you need a strategy to get your clients and prospects to see why you are their choice for IT services and security.
What you need today is a well-defined contract that has limits and splits out security from everyday support. This is a way for you to differentiate what you bring to the table and to get them to understand why your solutions make more sense than simply the run of the mill managed services package.
It doesn’t matter whether you have a team of 50 technicians or are a one-man shop looking to grow a team. If you don’t define your package and sell a separate stack to clients and prospects, you will be hard pressed to scale and get off the ground.
If you aren’t presenting security as additional, you are opening up serious risks
If you aren’t clearly defining your security stack and engaging decisionmakers at your clients or prospects to understand why it might be changing (and their need to invest more in security) you will most definitely put yourself at risk of disgruntled or untrusting clients double checking your work.
Note: if you are interested in seeing how your current stack stacks up to recent cyberattacks, consider a stack analysis (we offer these free to the MSP community).
I know that you might be saying “But my clients are happy with my managed services offerings as-is”. That’s great. And I think you’ve worked hard to build book of business of loyal and happy clients. That is NOT an easy task!
But I want you to start thinking about how you can delineate your value and get your clients to understand what exactly you bring to the table. With cybersecurity in the news practically daily in the current news cycles, I want them to remember you have solutions protecting them from business-shuttering attacks rather than have a haunting suspicion or even a little doubt in the back of their mind wondering if they are safe enough.
This is where splitting some of your offerings—especially your cyber stack—as a completely separate offering.
How can you do this and make them happier with your service (without pissing anyone off)?
I will be taking a deep dive into splitting up your managed services offering July 8th at 12 PM ET.
More details here: https://www.galacticscan.com/friday/
This is especially important when you try to swim upstream to larger engagements with companies that have CIOs, IT Directors, or IT teams.
