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.
Start The Right Conversation
It can be easy to start a conversation with a potential customer that doesn’t want to deal with MSPs but who can be shown it is lacking tools to run its business more easily, Cox said.
“They probably think they’re covered, but we might be able to sell them some tools here and there that are going to make their life easy,” he said. “And every little bit that you can push that door open is another opportunity in six or eight months. Sooner or later, they’re 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.”
MSPs who can get in the door at bigger companies will be the first call every time something comes up, Cox said.
“Maybe you’re just taking them out to lunch and talking about HIPAA,” he said. “You were talking about SIEM [security information and event management]. And you’re talking about pen [penetration] tests. But when you’re a part of every conversation they have, you really start to build your business.“
Cox gave as an example a prospective customer who had a firewall issue after another local solution provider wasn’t able to resolve it.
“He needed our expertise,” he said. “We went in there and hit it out of the park. Now we charge them about $2,500 a month to monitor their networks, give them all the tools. Zero labor, we just give them the tools. And we just refreshed their data center, which has generated over $100,000 in revenue in two years.”
