N-able: MSPs Should Seek To Manage 100 Percent Of Customers' Devices

Managed service providers should be marketing to customers with the goal of managing every device from every customer or they are at risk of losing that customer to a competitor, said Gavin Garbutt, CEO of N-able Technologies.

During a keynote speech at N-able's annual Partner Summit in Scottsdale, Ariz., Garbutt noted AIM research that showed annual IT spending on remote managed IT services by SMBs is expected to more than triple in the next 5 years.

"If we keep that pace, you should be growing at an accelerated rate. As customers ask more for fixed-fee service contracts, you need to be there first before competitors to deliver that," Garbutt told the crowd of about 300 N-able MSPs.

Garbutt asked the crowd how many customers in the last year have asked them for fixed-fee service contracts. About three-quarters of the attendees raised their hands. "In 2006, about two hands went up. There's now demand starting to pull this. You folks have been out there preaching, selling [managed services]. Now it's pulling through," Garbutt said.

About 95 percent of SMBs' IT systems are still not managed, Garbutt said. N-able commissioned several studies to understand SMBs' concerns. "Most SMBs want a real simple, cost-effective value propsosition. They didn't want a great big TCO analysis. they wanted nice, easy decisions and something intuitive," Garbutt said.

Next: Adjust Your Value Proposition

The problem is that most MSPs' don't have an intuitive value proposition that trickles down to every member of their organizations. "How many of you still have to get involved in the sales cycle? Wouldn't it be nice to have a value proposition for any sales rep to communicate to the customer, something the customer could intuitively understand and get on board for that?" Garbutt asked.

Garbutt described three types of customers, key customers who "when you say jump they say how high," time and material customers and casual customers. The key is to figure out how to get the second and third groups to employ managed services.

"Even if you have 100 percent of customers managed, you probably don't have 100 percent of their devices," Garbutt said. To get to 100 percent, Garbutt challenged MSPs to double their managed customer base over the next 12 months.

"Think about your average number of customers and average seats. How many end points do you actually sell to your customer base? I'll bet in a lot of cases there's a huge discrepancy between the number you sell, which may be one-third the total end points in your customer base. We should own those customers, whether it's with backup or [antivirus]," Garbutt said. "Go out to your next level of customers. Say we have a managed AV solution for you which ties into our enterprise level NOC and also provides you with reports to show you where you have problems from a compliance or security perspective."

MSPs should continue to cross-sell and upsell customers into proactive managed programs, Garbutt said. "Wouldn't it be nice to have all customers on there," he said. "Somebody soon will have those customers on a dashboard. Is it going to be you or your competitor?"

Next: Take Control Of Your Market

Every MSP in the room has the opportunity to double their managed customer base, Garbutt said.

"Take control of your market. It's your business. It's about you increasing your business and increasing your profitability. It's either a change in attitude or a change in personnel. Remove the barriers for your SMB customers to adopt your services," he said.