Many managed service providers talk about good business strategies for the bad economy. I prefer to look at what you can do to increase your chance of success in good times as well as bad. In this blog entry, I offer four tips for ongoing business success — regardless of the economic climate. And in my next blog entry, I’ll take a closer look at a specific vertical market opportunity that’s ideal for managed service providers.
Four Steps to Increase Your Your Business Performance:
1. Remember CASH is king. Capital expenditures are being held to bare minimums. By you and your clients. Your clients’ preference is for operating expenditures and utility computing. You should do your best to provide your services by billing monthly. Make sure you have lease programs available for your clients’ hardware purchases. Take steps necessary to improve your own cash flow. Keep Days Receivables Outstanding (DRO) in check. If you don’t know your average DRO, you may be falling behind without even knowing it. If you know your clients are falling behind, offer payment plans. Some cash is better than none.
2. Maximize Profit Margins: Make sure you maximize profit margins on all products and services you offer. Just turning dollars will kill you. Also, offering free service with hardware purchases will put your business in a negative cash position over time.
3. Focus On Growth Markets: Based on all accounts, SMB’s will drive business growth through the economic downturn. Offer products and services which solve business problems that SMB’s have. What are the technology-related solutions that SMB’s are looking for? According to various VAR publications, those are:
- Security because of all the regulations being pushed down from larger organizations (SOX, GLBA, HIPAA, PCI)
- Data Convergence or VOIP because of the increased productivity that can be achieved
- Data storage and data protection (Business Continuity)–in part due to the regulations we noted and the desire to be up and running at all times.
- Virtualization because they are told they can do more with less even though they may not understand it.
All are expected to have double digit growth for the next 5 years.
4. Acquire New Vertical Market Customers: New client acquisition is more critical than ever. You will lose some clients so make sure that you have more coming in than going out. Taking a vertical approach — and focusing on the right vertical — will ensure more success if you target industries that are somewhat immune to the recession.
Care to debate me on the points above? Let me know. And for my next blog entry, I’ll return with some practical guidance for vertical market success.
Note: Maurice Saluan is VP-Channel Management for Zenith Infotech as well as seasoned sales veteran in the managed service arena. Guest blog entries such as this one are contributed on a monthly basis as part of MSPmentor.net’s 2009 Platinum sponsorship.
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Tags: Health Insurance Portability And Accountability Act | HIPAA | managed service provider business strategies | managed services business strategies | Sarbanes-Oxley | Zenith Infotech
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Does Zenith have any tools/marketing materials to help me sell managed services into small doctors offices? I understand the connection between hipaa and contingency planning/backup/DR but do you have a simple one sheet to help me describe the solution?
Brent: I will ping Zenith for you.
Hello Brent,
We believe this is very important. Zenith provides a Marketing Center for our partners that includes loads of unbranded materials that you can use to create your own materials. This includes both materials for Managed Services as well as Business Continuity. We have a white paper that is professionally done that speaks directly to the C-level executive or Physician that does a great job describing the solution. Many of our Partners customize this white paper to fit their needs.
We also provide additional white papers, solution briefs, presentations for lunch and learns, unbranded flash demos, micro-websites with solution details without pricing to which your logo can be added (for a small fee), postcards for direct mail done in Publisher, telemarketing scripts, sample end client agreements and more. We don’t one specific marketing piece that is directed at healthcare but we’re working on it. Many of the items I noted are designed to be used to get you up and running very quickly.
Does Kaseya have any tools/marketing materials to help me sell managed services into small doctors offices? I understand the connection between hipaa and contingency planning/backup/DR but do you have a simple one sheet to help me describe the solution?
Richard, Kaseya went out and found one of the most successful IT Service Providers in the US and partnered with him to educate our customers on how to sell and market a recurring revenue business model to any type of customer. I would highly recommend looking at Gary Pica and Truemethods.com as a resource to meet your needs. The great thing about Gary is that he has done it ($500K in monthly recurring revenue) and can speak from experience.
In further reference to your question, Kaseya does not prohibit you from being HIPPA compliant.
Kaseya is one of the most economical IT Service Automation solutions available today and I wish you the best of luck.