Managed services News
7 Ways To Build A ‘Sticky’ Managed Services Practice
Joseph F. Kovar
‘Sooner or later, [a customer is] going to replace a switch. They’re going to upgrade a firewall. They’re going to have 30 users go home and have to work from home for the next six months, a year, a year and a half. Then they’re going to need help setting that up. So you can jump in there and be their savior,’ says David Cox, director of operations at G6 Communications.
Building “Sticky” Services
MSPs have been told time and time again that “stickiness,” or holding on to their customers throughout the business relationshp, is key to building a successful managed service practice. But doing so can require a combination of effort and patience, according to two MSP executives who have found success and shared some of the methods they used.
Wayne Hunter (photo, right), co-founder and CEO of Allen, Texas-based AvTek Solutions, and David Cox, director of operations at New Haven, Ind.-based G6 Communications, had an open discussion with fellow MSPs at the recent XChange+ 2021 conference and talked about some of the ways they bring traditional IT customers into managed services as well as how they bring managed services customers into higher-margin co-managed services.
Hunter told his peers that his company started as a traditional solution provider with an enterprise focus and eventually moved toward the MSP model, while many MSPs start with smaller customers and try to move up the stack.
“When you get that model, and now you want to move up, now you have to change how you think, how you approach, how you sell, how you communicate,” he said. “Some can do it, some are struggling to try to do it, and others have found a way to be successful.”
Cox said his company started as a true MSP.
“We did everything, and we did nothing,“ he said. ”We walked away from a lot of business where there was no opportunity to go in and take over. We found out about three years ago that that was a huge mistake. We were missing out on some great opportunities.”
Hunter and Cox shared seven tips on shifting a business into managed and co-managed services and how to manage those services to keep customers asking for more.
