What Makes Clients Stick With Your MSP? | EP113

[00:00:06] I would tell you my New Jersey Transit story about why? Okay. So for a long time when I was living in the old house, pre-COVID, I used to take the train to the city all the time. And for a while, because I was like really big into Twitter for a hot minute, obviously before it became not Twitter. And so every morning I would get on the train and I would tweet to New Jersey Transit saying like, hey, I'm on train 6231 heading into Manhattan.

[00:00:32] I see that the Wi-Fi password has changed. What's the new Wi-Fi password? Now, the joke here is that there's never been Wi-Fi on the train, but I figured if I can tweet and I can get other people to tweet to New Jersey Transit enough, maybe they would consider putting Wi-Fi on the train.

[00:00:46] And my second part of this plan, which involves a little bit of vandalism, was to make posters to put on the advertisement squares on the trains that say, New Jersey Transit, now with Wi-Fi, having trouble? Tweet at New Jersey Transit to get them to be motivated to either try to shut this down or, I don't know, put Wi-Fi on the train. Seems such a basic item.

[00:01:09] It's, I even wrote to them and I was like, you can use a cellular, because this is before Starlink. I was like, here's how you can do it with a Meraki firewall in the cab and like one AP per car. You don't even probably need one per car. And a cellular modem and done. And if you get it in bulk, I'm sure you can get it for cheaper than paying Meraki prices, but I'd be glad to take this contract.

[00:01:32] But every day for like four months and every day they were like, if you're having trouble on the platform connecting to our Wi-Fi, maybe we, maybe you should restart your phone or whatever. And I was like, not on the platform. I'm on the train. Like I just kept trying to rub it in. They're like, I was on the train and I was like, I want Wi-Fi on the train because there's no reason why there shouldn't be Wi-Fi. Amtrak has Wi-Fi on their trains. It's garbage. And they have Amtrak. Why can't the New Jersey Transit have it? So I had this whole plan. And it's funny because I've told this story to other people.

[00:02:01] And so I was just reviewing my notes for ACES, which was obviously a couple of weeks ago. And I didn't even just scan by. I don't even notice that one of my friends who happened to have been, he used to be in New York. I think he moved to North Carolina. We always ask like, what do you want to learn at the conference? And he literally wrote, does the New Jersey Transit have Wi-Fi yet? Yeah. I mean, Amtrak, even just between Raleigh and Charlotte here in North Carolina has Wi-Fi.

[00:02:29] It's one of my favorite reasons for taking the train if I have an event or something in Charlotte, because it's just so much easier. And I get so much more work done in that two hour trip between the two. I really do feel like trains and planes don't need Wi-Fi. I feel like that disconnect is so missing now. You know, like I try not to connect to the Wi-Fi. I never pay for Wi-Fi on a plane. I'll turn on messaging so I can get messaging.

[00:02:57] But like, I don't need that connection, you know, for the entire time I'm on a flight. It depends on what I'm working on. Like, there are SaaS applications that I cannot get away from having an internet connection for. Like work things? Well, yeah. I mean, I wouldn't be playing games on a plane. I just don't understand. Like, I don't want to be on an airplane and being on a Zoom call. Like, that's annoying. Well, I'm not going to be on a Zoom call. But if I'm working on...

[00:03:26] So one of my favorite tools for just brainstorming, right? Which is frequently what I like to do on a plane, is Miro. And you have to have an internet connection to use Miro. So that would be an example. I like downloading things to my iPad to watch on the plane and then falling asleep because I hate flying. So I'm okay not having internet. Fair. Fair. You know what? To each their own. And an ear, and ear, and ear, and ear.

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[00:04:55] The multi-tenant dashboard, with built-in remediation guidance and patch management, makes it easy to identify, manage, and remediate vulnerabilities quickly, helping you better protect your clients. Visit nodeware.com to learn more. What's up, everybody? Welcome to the All Things MSP Podcast. I'm your host, Justin Oskar. And next to me is Whiskerstein. Even Frankenstein had boundaries. I did ask ChatGBT to come up with a bunch of new disses for you. I would like to play them for everybody so they hear them now while you still have this beard. Beardzilla.

[00:05:25] It's taken on a life of its own and now it's terrorizing grooming tools. The Grizzly Man. Face Forest. Whiskerstein. Whiskerstein. Frankenstein? Whiskerstein. Yard Sale Yeti. I thought that was a cute one. The Beardsman Prophecies. Wolverine. Not quite Logan, but definitely Feral. Gandalf the Ungroomed. And Sasquatch. Like Sasquatch, but squashed under beard volume. And then this is my favorite one.

[00:05:54] And this is what I'm going to call you from now on until you shave. ZZ No. Well, you're going to, it's going to be a while because we're, we're going to try and see where this thing goes. Right? Why? Because I feel like it. Right? Listen, I'm not one to really like comment on another men's health and beauty, but ZZ No.

[00:06:23] Well, anyway. You feeling good? You good today? This is a good day. I am. I am. You know, the beard's coming in nicely as you so, you know, love to talk about these days. I think we've been talking about it for three or four episodes now. Going to keep going. And what were, what I started it in February when I went on the cruise. Yeah. And so we are just about three months in. Yeah.

[00:06:54] And I'm just waiting one day for Amy to pop in and be like, I've been telling him to shave it for three months now. Yeah. Well, that's not going to happen today because she is on her way to a conference. So. I'm going to have to call her and have a conversation about this. We're going to team up against you. Well, you will have that opportunity at PAX 8 Beyond. Oh, that's nice. Yeah. I will be at PAX 8 Beyond. I'm going to be attending, not speaking at PAX 8 Beyond. I also still feel like they missed the opportunity to call it PAX 9 because it's beyond PAX 8.

[00:07:24] But what do I know? The branding doesn't work. Yeah. I know. That's not really my problem. That's Ben Coley's problem. Anyway. Yeah. I'll be at PAX 8 attending. I'm actually bringing some people with me. I've never been to Colorado and I'm sure I'm not going to get a lot of time to like go and explore Colorado. Maybe I'll take my team out for dinner. But I've never been. I have warned my team because I do come from the flatlands that like I'm not 100. And like one of my guys comes from Missouri, which is even flatter than New Jersey.

[00:07:54] Like be warned. Like everyone always warns you about the air pressure in Colorado. And I'm like, all right. It's only if you go up into the mountains. The area around the Denver airport in the Gaylord Rockies where PAX 8 Beyond is being held is relatively flat actually. Oh, okay. Yeah. I'm not really worried. I hear it's beautiful though. I've never been. I'm excited to be at PAX 8. I'm excited. This is actually the first conference where I'm bringing staff members also.

[00:08:23] Normally I just go myself because I go and like I do more networking than anything else or I'm speaking at the event. I usually don't go to events unless I'm speaking. But the content at PAX 8 Beyond, the content at PAX 9 because I'm still going to call it Pat, seems really interesting to both my guy Fred who we've talked about in past episodes and my director of operations Justin Gross.

[00:08:45] Because I feel like understanding the whole market is something that like goes beyond just my knowledge base. And I feel like there's going to be a lot of takeaways from them. Also, I think Neil deGrasse Tyson is like one of the keynotes, which I don't understand. Why? Because like is ASHO physicists and the idea of going beyond like is that what they're playing off of? You know, it does have a tie in there.

[00:09:14] But a lot of times with these bigger conferences, they bring somebody from the outside. Yeah. And a lot of times it does help bring a different point of view to the conference. And, you know, quite honestly, that makes you think a little bit differently, which is a lot of what going to these conferences is about. I mean, I'm just trying to figure out like how Neil deGrasse Tyson is going to tell me to secure my Office 365 portals. He's not.

[00:09:42] But, you know, as a scientist, I'm sure that there are things that he can bring to the conversation that are going to make you think differently about some things. You keep saying think differently. And that was an Apple thing. I just like I just keep rubbing my head. Actually, I will also be attending and I'm not bringing anyone to this one because it's expensive. If you're an Apple consultant, you should know about this. There's the ACN Tech Summit happening in August in I want to say it's San Jose. Limited seats.

[00:10:10] I know the agenda is still being worked on, but it's supposed to be pretty awesome. It's the first time Apple is actually doing an event for ACNs in quite some time. That will be coming up in August. And then the GTIA conference is in July, I want to say, in Tennessee. And I don't have words about that one yet because you and I, we just talked about this the other day. Like you and I are still in the unknown land. We should make a phone call and figure that out.

[00:10:39] And then Channel Pro Network in November in LA. I think that's everything I have lined up. Oh, and I'll be speaking at Mac Admins. They accepted me to speak at Mac Admins, Penn State University in July. I got a busy summer ahead of me. Yeah, well, nice. PAX 8's in June. Mac Admins is in July. The ACN Tech Summit's in August. And then November will be the Channel Pro. So crazy busy schedule coming up over the next couple of months.

[00:11:06] So if you want to see me not in this studio and realize that I am a real person and I have fingers and toes. I'm not an AI. Come check us out at any of those events. You mean you're not generated by Sora? No. Can you imagine how I was? This would be horrible. It's getting better all the time. It is getting better. Actually, I had the lady in the box generate some graphics with words.

[00:11:35] And like the words were correct and clear. I know, right? Which I think is amazing. It's finally like not having like random letters everywhere. I think that's pretty cool. All right. Let's get into something today. Anyway, you had asked me to set you off for this one because you have a way to like, I'm just going to give you an alley-oop and you're going to dunk this one. Okay. Now, the problem is I want the audience to know that you wanted me to ask, so Eric, why is it important to make clients sticky? And my response to that was, that sounds gross.

[00:12:04] So I'm going to rephrase that. I just want everyone to know that that's what you asked me to tell you. Make it my fault. We don't talk about MSP things on this show, right? Okay. So let's talk about how to keep clients and what you can do to keep clients longer and keep those contracts going.

[00:12:31] Because the idea of a quote unquote sticky client is a good thing. And I think MSPs strive to have that. Nobody wants their contracts with a client to be up after a year and then them leave. You don't want that kind of churn. You want long time clients. I mean, I have clients that are going on 17 plus years. Yeah. There's something to be said about that, especially if you ever get to the point where you want to exit.

[00:13:00] So there's a lot to be said about how to keep clients happy and sticky. What do you got for me, Eric? I'll add my commentary as we go. Well, so a personal anecdote first to go along with your 17 years. For those of you who don't know, I had a break fix business for about 10 years. Took about three years off and then started my MSP.

[00:13:22] And in the transition, when I went back into businesses and MSP, I had like 10 to 15 customers that came right back. Like almost day one that I started my MSP, I had customers that I had previously had with a three year break in between. Yeah. Come back to me. Come back to me.

[00:13:48] So that's how strong of a relationship an MSP can create with these clients. But a couple of numbers to kind of prove it to you. Okay. And this is one. This is my favorite right here. Increasing customer retention by 5%, just 5%, which is a very small number, can actually increase profits by 25 to 95%. Wow. Like that's huge. And that's from Bain and company.

[00:14:16] So, you know, where the source came from. And then there's just the factor that a lot of us are not good at sales and marketing. Right? Mm-hmm. So why would you go out and acquire a new customer when that costs 5 to 25 times more than trying to retain an existing one? There's all these numbers. I could go on and on.

[00:14:41] You know, existing customers are 60 to 70% more likely to buy again, while new prospects converted only 5 to 20%. So instead of going out and getting new clients, find a new product or service that you can bring to your existing clients. You know, if you really want to raise revenue quickly. And loyal clients, this goes back to sales and marketing, okay? Loyal clients are four times more likely to refer friends or colleagues.

[00:15:11] That goes back to the strength of referrals in this industry, which I know a lot of people will say referrals are not as strong as they used to be, which is absolutely true. But it doesn't make them not usable anymore. I still believe they are one of the strongest tools in your toolbox when it comes to sales and marketing in the MSP industry. I do two, despite the fact in 17 years, I think I've only gotten like one or two referrals. I'll be honest.

[00:15:41] And I think that's market driven. I've said this on episodes before. I think because we're in New York City specifically, nobody wants to refer anyone else because you don't want them. You don't want your vendor to not be there for you the minute you need them. And if you're referring them to other people, they may not be. And I still stand on that. But in other areas, we have gotten referrals like in other geographic areas. We got referrals. But let's talk about that first thing, right?

[00:16:08] Being the 5% you said was being 5% better with that cluster, right? 5% better in retention. If 5% better in retention can go between 25% and 95% more profit. Like that's absolutely true. Like I said, you know, I've had clients for 17 years. I've had clients for 10 years. I've had clients for eight years, whatever it is. It is so much easier to sell a client on a new item to your stack than it is to sell a new customer on your entire stack, right?

[00:16:36] Because think about just how much you're going to overwhelm a new customer. You pick up a new customer. Let's say it's a 30-person office, right? Ideal customer. It hits your ICP. You've got this locked and loaded.

[00:16:48] However, to get them into your system, you have to throw at them management, monitoring, email security, email takeover, spam protection, anti-phishing, anti-malware, dark web, SOC, 24-hour security, vulnerability management. Like the list goes on and on.

[00:17:15] If you already have a customer and let's say they're halfway or three quarters into your stack, the second you get a new product that you like or that one customer needs and you can sell it to other ones, which is usually how that happens, it's a much easier sale. I'll give you a great example. And I can tell you this from personal experience. We had a client who needed 24 by 7 MDR and we got them a vendor. I'm not going to mention who. I'm not going to mention who's in the store.

[00:17:42] And it works, solves what they need, gives them alerting, calls them when things go wrong, et cetera, et cetera. So now we have this new vendor in our book of business that we're doing work with. Well, what we can do then is go to our other clients who have similar needs and say, hey, listen, we just signed up another client with this vendor. This is what they do. This is what they do.

[00:18:05] And I think, I personally think this is something that can help you enhance your security offering, enhance your technical offering, enhance your efficiency, whatever. And it's going to cost 15, 20 bucks per user per month.

[00:18:23] In a 30-person office, you're asking someone to come up with $450 more per month to add to their existing bill, which is a lot easier than trying to get a new customer and their total bill being almost $4,500, like 10 times the price to get them into your entire stack. Right? It's obviously a lot easier to sell $450 than it is to sell $4,500.

[00:18:52] Now, Alex Ramazi, who's like a big sales guy, and I don't know how much you want to believe him or not, but I'll just give you a quote that he said. Right? You have a $10. If you want people to buy, you put a $10 item, you put a $150 item, you put a $1,000 item. They're going to go for that $150 item because the $10 one, they're going to think it's too cheap. And the $1,000 one, you're obviously overpricing on purpose. They're going to fall for that $450. So that $150, that's where you want them.

[00:19:20] It's the same case here because in order to bring somebody in at $4,500, you can tell them like, oh, I have a $45,000 a month package. They're not going to believe that. But why go through all of that when you can just go to that existing customer and say, hey, $450 a month gets you another whole new security level that will provide you 90% better security. And be able to like tick the boxes when you have to do an ID audit or assessments or when it comes to insurance. Like it's such an easier sale.

[00:19:49] And the fact that people aren't doing that is ridiculous. Well, and there's plenty of those opportunities, right? Like right now in our industry, there are, I would say, three main things that are relatively new that there is a good chance you are not doing for your clients. One is AI.

[00:20:09] You know, there's a lot of opportunity in AI to create policies, do things that really help them adopt AI in their business. And you can turn that into a recurring revenue. Another one is, I won't say security. It's more of risk management because security has already been out for a while, right?

[00:20:34] We know there's a need for security, but making sure at a business level that security and other things like incident response plans and policies and things like that are actually reducing the risk footprint of the business. Because a lot of that is technology related today. And then the last, but I think probably the biggest opportunity for most MSPs is in compliance.

[00:21:04] Because so many businesses that don't know that they need compliance actually need compliance today. And there are a lot of vendors who can help you build that compliance and create an offering for your clients to make sure that they are covered when it comes to FTC or HIPAA or GDPR or any of those things that they may have to comply with. You did say something which really I liked.

[00:21:34] You said vendors. Because I feel like a lot of people who listen are going to want to, they're immediately when they're hearing you talk about policy writing or compliance or security writing IRPs, immediately a lot of people who are listening are going to be like, I don't know how to do that. You're not supposed to be doing it. You're supposed to be introducing these customers and understanding their business needs and to introduce them to the right partner. We have a cybersecurity firm that we work with that we introduce to everybody.

[00:22:02] And they do all that work. I sit there on the team's calls just like with my hands up being like, whatever you guys need me to do, I'll jump in. But like, this is a you thing. And they're writing IRP policies, your incident response policy. They're writing BDCRs. They're writing AI policies. They're writing security policies. They're helping with compliance.

[00:22:24] This particular cybersecurity firm that we work with, right, because on the Apple side of things, we have something called the MSCP, the Mac OS security compliance program. It's how to get Macs being NIST compliant very fast. Or what's the other one? CC something. CIS. CIS compliant. Very fast. My cybersecurity firm, I gave them the output from Mac OS security with here are the items, like the 201 items.

[00:22:53] And my cybersecurity firm came back to me and said, these are the items you need to like block up and lock up for NIST compliant for this customer. And guess what? I was able to sell my customer not only on working with the cybersecurity firm, but also NIST monitoring for an extra $8 a month. And I went in and the cybersecurity firm wrote me the policy that I needed to write. They wrote me the rules. And we just went in and applied the rules. And now we're monitoring the computers to make sure that they are, quote, unquote, NIST compliant.

[00:23:22] I'm putting it in quotes for some odd reason. I don't know why. They are NIST compliant. But they're NIST compliant based on their benchmarks. So here, what I've done is a couple things. One is I sold my customer on a service that I'm selling and a vendor. I'm tied to that vendor. So like do the math. And also, I recommended the vendor. So like the customer, whilst, yes, will go to the vendor direct a lot of the time for things, I'm still in the loop on all that stuff because the vendor and I have that kind of relationship.

[00:23:52] And that's what you want with your vendors, right? So if something comes up, the vendor will say, hey, we had a call with XYZ customer today. This is the information just so that way you have it. So that way when I talk to them next, I don't have to go, hey, where are you at with that thing? I know exactly where you're at. So you want that kind of relationship. So there's those pieces. Because when talking to the customer and knowing what they're up to makes me look like I'm more interested in their business, which is what you want, makes me more sticky with the customer.

[00:24:18] I'm now bringing in more money from both NIST compliant and selling the cyber. And when the cybersecurity firm goes through and does things for my customers, they find holes that need to be dealt with. Who do you think is going to call to patch up those holes? This guy. So like there's opportunities there too.

[00:24:40] What I really feel like the way to be sticky with a customer is to open your eyes a little bit wider and look for all of those inefficiencies and opportunities. Customers, especially now, need to really, really, really, really start thinking about compliance. But it's a hard thing when you've got a new customer on the phone. And we've talked about this on the show before. Like I have overrun a potential new customer with compliance mumbo jumbo.

[00:25:08] And they've never called me again because I like scared them away. But an existing customer who does anything with financial. And I'm like, hey, you don't have anything that's compliant. Let's get you compliant on XYZ. Yeah, yeah, let's do that right now. And it makes it a lot more sense. It's an easy sell and it's an easy way to get them to start doing things that they need to do. So it also makes me look good because I'm there supporting them and trying to help their business. Right.

[00:25:37] So it makes me look like I'm vested in their business. Right. And by the way, this is an opportune time to bring up Compliance Scorecard, who is a sponsor of the All Things MSP podcast and community. And they are one of those vendors out there who will help you put a lot of this together and help create an offering for your clients. And I do know that they are they've started a new thing where they'll take you through a boot camp that helps you get compliant so that then you can go and help your clients get compliant as well.

[00:26:07] I do believe in eating your own dog food. That's why we're I mean, we've talked about this for months. We're still going for our SOC 2 compliance because I feel like so many of my customers need it and I want to make sure we have it. And we're getting there. It's it's it's not like you can do it in a week. It takes a long time to get to this. But it's one of those things where if you want to sell compliance, you should be compliant as well. But it's not only these three things. Right. Like I have a problem with the AI policy part because even I don't know what to write.

[00:26:32] And the only thing I've ever done is had Chad JBT write me a policy about itself, which seems self self indulgent for some reason. Back at ACES 2. I want to say it was ACES 2. So this is 2016. My good friend Will O'Neill did a presentation on things MSPs or ICNs at the time should be selling to customers. And the list has not changed, which is hilarious because there's so many MSPs out there that are still not doing so many of these things.

[00:27:03] You should be selling Internet services. You should be selling SSL certificates. You should be selling DNS services and DNS filtering. You should be selling domain monitoring. You should be selling. You should be reselling every email product that's ever the sun, including the email itself. If you're not getting your Google direct or through SureWeb and your Microsoft through direct or through Pax8 and getting money off of that, you're missing out.

[00:27:30] You should be selling email security to go on top of that. Google and Microsoft are great. However, let me add on Microsoft Defender or a product like Avanon or Checkpoint or whatever. Like your stack to be selling. If you want to be sticky with a customer and make it hard for them to break up with you, not in like a weird way, like you should be selling them every service under the sun. Yeah, so that's a great point.

[00:27:56] And I look at it from a little bit different point of view in that everything that you're not selling to them that is technology related. Someone else is. Gives somebody else a wedge to put in the door. Yeah. To be able to create an entry point into your client. And that's no bueno. Can I wait on that real quick? Like none of us want to deal with printers, but do you know how many printing companies I've seen?

[00:28:24] Because like obviously we're not going to manage your printer or your Fiery. The number of printing companies I've seen, which is this pisses me off a little bit, have been coming in and offering MSP services. Yep. Like I can't manage your printer. And so I have to figure out how to put a wall to protect that. Like it is true. Anything that you're not selling and someone else is, they have the opportunity to come in and steal your customer from right under your feet. Yeah.

[00:28:49] And that's why, you know, your agreements are so important because if you're not going to sell managed print services or support their printers, you need to be ironclad in your agreement that everything that touches the network has to go through you because otherwise it can't be secured. I mean, it makes sense, right? But that also gives you the opportunity to kind of wrangle in that print vendor. Right. Put walls around them and protect the borders. Right.

[00:29:19] I do like, you know, it's funny as you said that everything in the network has to go through you. I've seen funny ways of like putting things in the network closet to keep people from like doing things. I've always wanted to, and I'll, and I accept anyone's help with this one. I've always wanted to take a, like a one new blank panel and have somebody like water jet out. Like, unless you're Virtua, do not touch this. Three, four, seven, three, six, nine.

[00:29:42] Like I want that in me as like a, like a, like a really nice clean, not a 3D print, but like a water jet cutout of the metal in the one new panel to keep people from touching stuff. But yeah, like that's where it's at. It's, it's, it's one of those things where like every opportunity, every missing piece that that customer has is an opportunity for you. And every opportunity is a potential sale.

[00:30:10] And every potential sale keeps you more sticky with customers. Now there's more to being sticky with customers than selling them services. I think this is, we should touch on this a little bit. And that is be nice to people, right? Like, and I don't mean that, I don't mean that you're not being nice, but I mean like care a little bit about the customer and what's going on and care about their dog or their birthday.

[00:30:36] Like we, we were doing this for a very long time and we stopped because we don't have enough data and we're trying to figure out how to bring this back. But like we were doing this for a very long time. Anytime it was a employee's birthday at any of our customers, we sent a handwritten happy birthday card. And we're going to do that again. We're going to pick that back up. And it's a process to get that done. Like we're not machine printing these things. They're not generic. Like someone on our team is handwriting.

[00:31:02] But like knowing their birthday and sending them a happy birthday or like knowing their dog's name. And like when you hear the dog barking in the back room being like, how is Lilo doing? Like that kind of thing. Like that makes you sticky because the customer then feels like you're friends. Well, and that kind of goes to why I think MSPs are still a very viable business model is because it is hard to, for a small business person,

[00:31:31] to have the level of trust with a large vendor who doesn't care who you are.

[00:31:40] And so the smaller MSP, I believe, truly has an advantage over a larger MSP when it comes to a local area serving small to medium-sized businesses where you still can actually know your client and they're not just another account in Salesforce. Yeah. A hundred percent.

[00:32:04] And even like, I mean, we've talked about like my company has been growing and I'm not saying I'm a major MSP, you know, I'm a big MSP. I'm probably not big in the scale of what you're talking about. But having multiple locations, we're still very much local. Like we're still very much in touch and in tune with the people who we're talking to and who we're working with. Right.

[00:32:26] And, you know, knowing that employees going in to have surgery or something like that, we'll send them flowers. Like these little things that make you better. Because what happened, here's another piece of this, which is really great. Employee has a baby. Right. Right. We send them a virtual onesie, which I stole from Peter Shankman years ago. That customer is going to remember that. That employee is going to remember that.

[00:32:53] And if they never leave and they go to another business, guess who they're going to want to call for IT help. Right. So like there's two angles to being sticky with customers. It's selling them services to get more of that, more of your footprint like in their business. And pre, like, I don't know what the word here is here. Like preeminent? No, that's not the word. I'm like trying to think of the word of like being ahead of the game of understanding what their needs are.

[00:33:23] Not proactive, but like. Well, I mean, it is that. It is that. But like even thinking well more above that, being like, okay, I know what projects you're working on internally. Let me see what we can do ahead before. Like they got ahead of it. This always reminds me of this story when COVID started, which feels like a. Eons ago. Part of the year ago, right? Somebody put out like an email and they were like, hey, is this a good email? And it was like, hey, this is the time to start thinking about VPN.

[00:33:51] And I was like, no, dude, you should have thought about VPN like way earlier than when COVID is happening. Because you should have anticipated that they need remote work. I don't mean you do anticipate that they all needed to be remote because obviously we didn't see it coming. But like the fact that you're thinking about VPN now, March of 2020, you missed the boat. So like thinking through a customer is really important. And you should be doing this with your team.

[00:34:17] Sit with your team and say like, hey, what have been this customer's last 5, 10, 20 tickets about? What's happening over there that we need to get ahead of? And think about what things you can proactively sell to the customer, right? Well, and that's where you need to be.

[00:34:37] That's the CTO service that I think is another very good viable option today because technology moves at a breakneck pace, right? And their industry is changing because of technology. But they don't necessarily understand how that technology applies to their business.

[00:34:57] And therefore, I think those MSPs who are adopting that CTO as a service type model are doing very well because that is probably one of the stickiest things you can do. Because now that business relies on you not only when things break, but also for future opportunity. And that's where you really start to drive revenue and profits in your client's business.

[00:35:27] And obviously, the more you do that for them, the more it's going to happen for you. And this is also not only true for MSPs who take care of businesses. I was thinking about MSPs who take care of like residential people because I know there's a couple of you that listen to this. It's the same thing, right? It might not be selling them 24 by 7 sock services to maintain their home thing. But like selling them backup services, backup their data.

[00:35:55] If you're willing to write the insurance policy, back it up to a system that you maintain. Put a Synology in a colo facility and back it up to that. Or offer to backup their email. People who do residential, if you're not backing up people's email, that's a ridiculous, like so easy to do. Because I got to admit, residential people tend to delete emails a lot, right?

[00:36:20] Like, you know, like provide them services to make, to enrich their technological journey. Whether that's, you know, rolling out a piece of, like write your own app that make it easier for them to connect with you. Because that's going to be a unique, that's going to be a unique proposition that you have that no one else does. And will help you be more sticky with those resident people.

[00:36:46] And I believe that residentials will give more referrals than a business will. That's emotional. I don't, I don't, I don't have a factor figure to read on that one. But like, I wouldn't be surprised if like, you know, those residential people, because, you know, they get together at the club before they play Canasta. And they're all going to talk about, you know, their new iPhone or whatever it is. They're going to say, oh, I have a wonderful tech person. You should call them.

[00:37:13] You know, I mean, I'm generalizing and stereotyping here. I'm like, you know where I'm going with this. You think? A little bit. But yeah, I mean, there's always something that you can do. And again, it's a sales thing and it's a personality thing. If you don't have the personality to do that part of it, like if you don't have the way, find, get a VA, get an EA, get somebody who can help with that.

[00:37:42] We've talked about outsourcing a million times on this show. But like, find somebody who can help do that stuff. That is, I think, I think, like, there's nothing, if you do these two things, if you're more, if you collect data on people and you're more personal about like, how's your kid? How's your dog? Here's a gift when you get hurt. Here's a nice Christmas gift, whatever. And you're like, by the way, I know you guys are working on this thing. Hey, by the way, you should be compliant.

[00:38:10] These are the new rules that are coming down from, you know, the spaghetti monster ahead. Like, we should look into doing these services. I think if you could do these two things in tandem, there's nothing stopping you from absolutely crushing. Yep. Sorry. It's easy math. It's easy math. Easy, easy math. Yeah. What else you got? What else do I have?

[00:38:39] Well, I just want to kind of reiterate a couple of things because I took a couple of notes as I was prepping for the episode. One of the things that higher retention or AKA lower churn does for your business is it means you spend less time onboarding, which of course you should be charging for. Right. You don't do onboarding for free. That's something that, you know, I definitely don't recommend is doing onboarding for free.

[00:39:09] Your managed services fees should start after they're onboarded and everything is set up. But that gives you more time to deliver value to your existing customers. And I think that is one of the key things here. If you deliver more value, you're going to have more retention. And that greater retention is going to lead to higher profitability.

[00:39:31] And then, again, just to reiterate the referrals part, happy clients can be some of your best salespeople. In fact, if you're small and you do a really good job at referrals, you probably don't need salespeople for quite a while as long as you're doing a really good job at referrals.

[00:39:53] And, you know, those long-term relationships, they really do create the greatest opportunity for upselling, cross-selling, and all of those things are going to lead to margin growth within that client. Yeah, absolutely. There's no better way to say it than what we're saying right here. Like, you know, I know, what's that expression, right? You can't squeeze blood from a stone, but you can.

[00:40:21] By the way, one of my favorite, you know, you know that expression, like, life gives you lemons and make lemonade. One of my favorite things that's been popping up around recently is that lemons are not naturally made. They were made by man. They crossbred, like, a citron with a bitter orange, which means life never gave us lemons. We invented them. And it's like this whole thing about it. But, yeah. And people say we don't talk about MSP stuff on this show.

[00:40:50] Yeah, but I am because, like, you can squeeze blood from a stone. You can squeeze lemon juice from a lemon. You can get more money out of a customer. There's always something there. You can always – and getting more money doesn't necessarily mean by selling them in a service. It means by holding on to them longer or expanding. You know what's a great thing to do that people need to do? Add in your contract a 5% cost of living increase. Your customers aren't really going to notice. And they get it, so it's cool.

[00:41:19] Make more money there. And the longer you keep that customer, that 5% will compound over years. Right? There's things like that. So, like, do right by your customer always. That should be – I don't even have to say that. But the fact that I am tells me people aren't. Like, do right by your customer in more ways than just fixing the computer. And you will reap reward after reward on that.

[00:41:50] Guaranteed. Guaranteed. There's no other way. Guaranteed. You can make more profit, more money, and get more customers by taking care of the ones. And to be honest, we've talked about this before. There are 40,000 MSPs out there. There's 7,000 in the Facebook group. If the 7,000 of you do just this much more than the other 33,000, you will win this game.

[00:42:20] Agreed. Well, if you want to be part of the 7,000, join us at facebook.com slash group slash allthingsmsp. Check us out on our high-def glory and watch how my camera's been flickering in and out because of my lights because I'm wearing a bright white t-shirt today at youtube.com slash at allthingsmsp. I hate these lights, Elgato. Listen to us on all of your favorite podcasting tools. You're listening to us right now. Leave an overview. Like, subscribe. The whole nine. Eric, anything else before we say goodbye to our loyal listeners slash viewers?

[00:42:49] No, because I thought that's what I did five minutes ago. Perfect. That's exactly how I want to end the show. That's Eric. I'm Justin. Bye. Thank you for listening or watching the All Things MSP podcast. If you liked this episode, go ahead and give us a thumbs up. Hit that like button and consider subscribing to catch all our weekly episodes. And from your host extraordinaire, Justin Eskar, and myself, Eric Anthony, your humble producer

[00:43:19] and All Things MSP founder, thank you very much for spending your time with us. If you are not aware, All Things MSP started as a Facebook group and now supports over 6,000 members. We also have a LinkedIn page for those of you who don't do Facebook. And make sure to check out our YouTube channel for even more content. A special thank you to our elite sponsor, CoreView, helping you manage your Microsoft 365 tenants instead of them managing you.

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[00:44:10] and opinions of any employer, vendor, sponsor, or random taxi driver in the Metro DC area. Be sure to join us next week for another exciting episode.