For the founder of an early-stage MSP, critical decisions come fast and furious – acquiring capital, investing that capital, finding talent, selecting SD, PSA and RMM tool kits and, oh yeah, closing some deals – that would be good too. Sometimes in all the fury, the most obvious initial questions do not get answered, “What am I selling?” “How should I price and discount?” “How do I establish SLAs?” Netting it out: “How do I productize a service offering so it’s easy for my customers to understand my stuff and buy it?”
Remember, monthly recurring revenue does not guarantee monthly recurring profit. Packaged wrong, managed services can easily turn into locked in multi-year recurring losses. Get back to Marketing 101 basics to make sure you’re locking in profits for the agreement term.
- Packaging: How do you package your offerings to create demand – so that prospects will understand the value and want to buy? How long should contracts be?
- SLAs: How do customers really view the SLA? What should you commit to? How many nines? What’s outside of scope?
- Pricing: Is every deal a custom quote? Should you unit price by monitored/managed device? Annual payments, quarterly, monthly?
- Service delivery: What do you build? What do you buy and resell? Do you host internally or outsource?
If you’re in the middle of making these kinds of decisions, you will want to check out an upcoming Nimsoft webcast. Entitled “Getting Started on the Right Track: The Key Decisions That Can Make or Break Your Business”, the webcast will be taking place July 1st, 2pm EST. For the event, we’re pulling together three executives from successful service providers, leaders who’ve had to make these very decisions for their businesses. Find out what they learned, what they got right, and what they’d do differently if they had the chance. To learn more and to register for this business growth strategy webcast, visit http://www.nimsoft.com/keydecisions/.
Phil LaForge is VP and GM, service providers at Nimsoft. Monthly guest blogs such as this one are part of MSPmentor’s annual platinum sponsorship. Read all of Nimsoft’s guest blogs here.
You can view a replay of this well attended (150) and very well recieved MSP All Stars webcast at this URL: http://www.nimsoft.com/keydecisions/
Big thanks to the following Nimsoft and Ingram Micro Seismic MSP partners who made the webcast a fulfilling experience for attendees (and also for those who view the replay!);
- Tim Barto, VP Marketing, Troubadour
- Eric Lehto, Advanced Technologies Manager, MSP Communications
- Brandon Foreman, CEO, Interactive E-Solutions
Ken Vanderweel
Marketing Director – Service Providers
Nimsoft
Typo in my last post…
Eric Lehto’s company name is ‘MSN Communications’ (not MSP Communications).
Cheers!
Ken