Making the transition from just being "the IT guys" to being their Trusted Partner

There are only three ways to grow your MSP:

1) Get more clients

2) Get those clients to buy more often

3) Get those clients to spend more every time they buy

Most MSP owners focus all their marketing attention on getting new clients. Nothing wrong with that.

Side note, I have all the marketing tools and content you'll need to win new clients in my MSP Marketing Edge service and community.

But here's the thing. The fastest way to grow your business and its?net profit?is to focus more of your attention on your existing clients.

Think of your business as a leaking bucket. You keep adding extra water (clients) but a little of the existing water seeps out of the holes in the bottom of the bucket. Every time you lose a client or they buy a service you offer from someone else, it's water dribbling out.

It’s difficult to ensure your bucket is 100% leak-proof. But you can plug the largest holes. That means an efficient client care system to thoroughly look after the existing clients.

Notice my use of the word system there. This is something that should be designed, and should happen consistently and systematically every week.

When I say client care, I don't mean just doing their IT. I mean communicating with them well, and making them feel really special.

That's a deliberate use of the word feel. People are more likely to switch to another MSP because of how they feel about you, than they are because of the core service itself. The actual IT support might be better than it has ever been. But if a long-term client feels as though “things aren’t as good as they used to be”, you have a problem.

Sometimes we tend to focus all our attention on our worst clients (because they generate the most noise) and leave the best clients to it. Figuring they’ve been clients for ages, so “they’ll be OK”.

Yet something as simple as a change in the person answering the phone can have a dramatic effect on retention (in a good or bad way).

Here's the answer

You need to start doing strategic reviews, aka Quarterly Business Reviews. You meet them once, twice or four times a year depending on their size and how fast they change.

The strategic review is about them, not you. It should be focused on their future plans and how technology can make things happen faster. If you find yourself looking backwards at support levels or being beaten up when something went wrong, you're not doing it right.

This is about shifting your relationship from being just a service provider, to being a strategic advisor. You still provide the service. But you occupy a much more important place in their heads and hearts.

The smartest move is to use the strategic reviews to create and review a technology roadmap with each client, so you are effectively agreeing together what projects and Monthly Recurring Revenue services they will buy in the future.

By becoming a strategic advisor, and not just “the people who do the IT”, you truly become a Trusted Partner. That's the most powerful client retention and upselling strategy in the world.