If you're like me you started 2020 or Q1 for that matter with a list of initiatives you need to accomplish in your business. For us, we follow the 3HAG and Gazelles methodologies, so our 3-year initiatives get broken down to our annual goals which become or quarterly priorities. Somethings these priorities are to support the company, a division, a department or even a specific product or service. Whatever the objective is we always want to make sure that everyone is rowing in the right direction and that the objectives are really moving the company forward. Do your initiatives really move your MSP forward? Last week we had a leadership meeting and set out to do just that. See if our rocks in 2019 really "stuck" and made a lasting change in the company. I don't think it was entirely surprising but most of them didn't. And that's what I want to talk to you about today. 10 things you should think about before launching an initiative in your company so that you can have a better chance of really moving your MSP forward. [INTRO] Defining your Rocks Of course, I don't know your planning process but when we decide to move forward with something in the company, we have, in the past, set about it by documenting the priority with the following header type data: Let me give you an example. The title or subject of the priority: Improve operations and scalability by assessing and improving PSA configurations and processes. Why is this a top priority?: We are seeing that reactive tickets are taking too long to get resolved and we want to move to a dispatch type process for the helpdesk. What possible roadblocks do you see?: Techs are used to working from the service board, and now they will be working solely from their calendar. This might be a difficult change. What are some potential side effects from this?: Clients may not like speaking to a dispatcher since they are used to going direct-to-tech. This might cause some unhappy clients. From here we flesh out the priority with milestones and indicators of success. This concept of milestones and indicators of success confused me for quite some time but through observations of my own team, I think that right-brain people are better with the indicators of success and left brain (analytical) people with the milestones. So what are milestones and indicators of success? Milestones: Milestones are points along the way of the project or priority that needs to be accomplished so that the end goal can be met. Think of milestones as the important tasks or events needed to accomplish the project. These are typically assigned to dates so that the priority can be completed within the timeframe. Indicators of Success: This is how you know you are successful in achieving your goal with the priority. We have indicators of success in the "yellow", "green" and "super-green" levels. This corresponds loosely to the good, better, best type of achievement for a priority. Start with the end in mind when you think of your indicators of success. Once we have our priorities, rocks, initiatives defined and an owner assigned, we score them weekly. We score the achievement of the priority as it exists today and our forecasted score for the end of the period. Quarterly if this is a quarterly goal. We score 1 to 4 with 3 being on track and good and 4 being exceeding expectations. New and Improved for 2020 - The 10 Questions you need to ask before moving forward This is what we have done for the last several years until last week's meeting when we reviewed all the priorities from 2019 and realized we had some problems that could be addressed with more clarity before we started the initiative. That's when we came up with these 10 questions that need to be answered before we green-light any new priority. Who is the implementation team? Who will actually get this done? Before we only listed the owner,

IT Provider Network - The Podcast for Growing IT Service Providers

10 Things to think about before you launch an initiative in your MSP – ITPN-047

Show notes to follow Ask your questions or share your feedback •Comment on the shownotes below •Email feedback@itprovidernetwork.com (audio files welcome) Get on the mailing list Low Volume by it is THE PLACE TO BE for all of my insider information. If you're on the list, you'll be the first to know. Signup Here Tell 'Em I Sent You If you investigate or purchase any product or service that I have talked about, please remember to mention that I sent you. I may or may not get a small commission but more importantly I hope to spread the word about the IT Provider Network. Please Subscribe Please consider Subscribing to the Podcast it is the only measure of listenership I have. Give me a Review Your written iTunes reviews encourage me and they help other people find the podcast. If you appreciate the information you are learning from the IT Provider Network then please do me a HUGE FAVOR and write a review on iTunes or on Stitcher! Connect with Me On the socials as @TerryRossi or @ITProviderNet Help a Brother Out Sign up for Coinbase Buy something from Amazon with my Affiliate Link I put these down here in case you are looking for anything from Amazon, I get a small commission if you click-thru from this site. You don't have to buy these items just click through from this page. Thanks in advance!

Mind the Gap

If you don't follow Jay McBain from Forrester Research, you should. Not only is he a thought leader in our industry and a really nice guy but if you don't follow him you would have missed his recent article The 64 Best Channel Podcasts Of 2019 where the IT Provider Network was listed among the best of the best. It was really ironic because I just saw Jay present at Marketopia's 4U2Grow conference in Clearwater last month. Jay actually did two presentations but his first one blew me away and I want to share with you my takeaways from that talk on today's episode of the IT Provider Network Podcast. Before I get into Jay's talk which was entitled "Achieving Extraordinary Success in 2020 and Beyond" I have to tell you that even before Jay added The IT Provider Network to his article about the best 64 Channel Podcasts I was going to tell you about this research because it blew me away. Honest Jay I was! As I said Jay was one of the speakers at the Marketopia 4U2GROW users conference. If you have never been to a 4U2GROW conference I encourage you to attend next year. It is a really intimate event at a world-class venue with great speakers like Jay McBain,Terry and Andra Hedden, Manual Palachuk and Erik Simpson. If you aren't familiar with Marketopia, they provide the channel (MSP's and Vendors) with Marketing and Appointment Setting services. For full disclosure, I am a client and they gave me a Partner of the Year award. Having said that, they kill it for us with leads and that's why we use them. Back to Jay's presentation - I could never begin to do it justice but never the less it was so eye-opening that as soon as I was back at the office I attempted to present it to my management team. Here were my big takeaways. Buyers have changed - they are much more educated about what you are selling before you even speak to them. The playing field is much more leveled and in fact, buyers might know more about your offering and how it fairs in the marketplace that your salespeople do. Google is the great equalizer and buyers are making much more of the buying decision before they reach out to us. What this means to me is we all need to do a better job of getting in front of buyers BEFORE they have a need. Be the one they think of and can find on Google because 68% of them prefer to do their own research before talking to a salesperson.A whopping 65% of tech buying decisions are now made by business leaders, not IT. What we used to call shadow IT and look at as a threat is now becoming the norm. Line of Business leaders are now sourcing their own solutions or demanding specific solutions from IT. What this means to me is we need to expand our marketing relationships with our clients and prospects. No longer is it enough to build a relationship with the owner of the company, you need to expand your definition of the buyer and cater to all of them...uniquely.80% of tech buyers report that the salesperson is NOT specialized enough. Wow, that means in our buyer's eyes we are not getting it done. We need to work harder getting our teams up to date on the ever-changing tech landscape, cyber, compliance and everything else we profess to be the "expert" in.Jay also reported that 96% of MSP's are unable to scale past 10 employees, and although Jay didn't report it, I know almost that same percentage can't scale past 1 million in annual revenue. The presentation went much deeper into these stats as well as the state of the channel, the explosion of software as a service and how buyers are bypassing traditional avenues and going to third parties to acquire the tech they need. There is a huge opportunity for us but we need to adapt and be agile. We need to cater to these new buyers and the way they buy. We need to expand our relationships with the buying groups that exist at our clients and prospects and stay in front of them with educational based marketing.

What I learned from Jay McBain at Marketopia’s 4U2GROW Conference

Information on upcoming training from Tony Robbins, Dean Graziosi, and Russell Brunson - Live April 30th

mymastermind.biz

Who do you want to serve? ITPN-043

One of my favorite Peter Gabriel songs is "Kiss that Frog"  and today I want to urge you all to start each day by kissing that frog ... although I pretty sure my advice is a little different than Peters. The dreaded Task List You know all the things on your to-do list that never seem to get done?   The stuff you push off every day because something more important gets in the way, or at least that's what you keep telling yourself and your co-workers, clients or employers. These are the frogs I want you to kiss. In our company, we have an accountability sheet We call it the "WWW" sheet.  WWW stands for who, what and when and it is the way we monitor tasks that need to be done to move our company forward.   Most of the tasks relate to the 6 core functions in our business.    By assigning a "who" and a "when" to each "what" we make someone accountable to the task and we have assigned a deadline to it. The problem is some of those who, what , whens never seem to get done. They get discussed each week during our huddle and the due date gets pushed out further and further but they don't get done. Since this is happening in the senior leadership team, the creme de la creme in our company,   I'm sure it's happening in team meetings throughout the company and that sucks.  Wasted time and agreed upon priorities not getting done. These hard to accomplish tasks, whether they are personal like getting a haircut, or an oil change for your car,  or business things like giving a performance review, or calling a client to tell them you are sorry for a mistake you made.   These are the things I call frogs.  I call them frogs because they are things we don't even want to touch.  We move away from them and try to avoid them at all costs. Kiss that Frog Imagine for a minute that you really had to kiss a frog,  imagine it was on your WWW list.    You had to give it a big wet 3-second kiss. You'd probably put it off as long as humanly possible, schedule it out for a year in the future.     If you had a year to do it you would probably do it on day 365, the very last day of the year.    It's human nature we put off what we don't want to do till the last possible moment. Think about it,  when you finally forced yourself to kiss that frog, you'd pucker up and give it a big long wet kiss right on the slimy skin of his back. What would happen? You'd probably freak out a bit, spit and complain LOUDLY, but it would be over in a minute, well really 3 seconds TOPS!  3 seconds that you spent 364 days agonizing over,   A year of stress for something that took less than a minute. When it comes to things we don't want to do, agonizing over it is almost always worse than actually doing it.  Once you kiss that frog, you're a little freer, you have less weight on your shoulders and you are free to move on to the next thing without the burden of kissing that frog hanging over you.  Better get a new notebook! I can help you fix this problem but you better get a new notebook because I bet if you're like me you have hundreds of frogs to kiss. You see the way these things work is that we constantly procrastinate on all of lives burdens and they build up in our minds.  We carry them around like heavy luggage every day. I know you don't think you have 100 open items on your internal to-do list but I bet you do!  I might even venture to bet you have twice that and that's a lot of weight to carry around.   These little things add up and bring you down. Let me share with you some common ones I see: The Top Ten List Working on Personal Relationships Actually doing "Date Night" Saying NO when you know you should Firing Someone Tolerating a consistently late employee Making a doctors appointment for yourself Ending a joint venture or partnership that's been over for quite a while. Doing Employees Performance Reviews or one-on-one coaching Dealing with Unresolved Conflicts of all types, at home and work.

Kiss that Frog

Drive to the Finish – Themes and How You Can Use Them I recently implemented a quarterly theme that I want to share with you today. I hope you’ll get a good grasp of the tactical things we did but I hope you’ll also take away the secondary meaning, the importance of taking care of your employees. It’s crucial you include them in the success of the company and make everyone feel wanted. This theme relates to the book Scaling Up by Verne Harnish where you concentrate on four different things; people, tasks, strategy, and execution. You do this by having a communications rhythm, focusing on key metrics, having and achieving quarterly rocks then having a strategy and a plan. What We Did We wanted to finish the year strong, so we implemented on of the things Verne talks about in the Scaling Up book and that is the concept of a theme. A theme is used to get everyone on board with the goals and objectives of the company. Typically, these themes are carried out quarterly and are centered around the critical metric trying to be achieved. First, we decided on the metric, which was revenue. Then we figured out how everyone could help with revenue. After that, we put together a series of communication messages, a few gifts for the team and a weekly cadence for communicating about the theme. We created a custom field in ConnectWise and created a dashboard to track leads. We looked at leads generated by department, in order to create a little bit of rivalry between departments, and we started monitoring it at the beginning of the quarter. This is the metric we used to measure success. Get a Rhythm going! In addition, we established a communications pattern. At the end of the week, I created a short 2-3-minute video in front of a green screen with a finish line. The idea behind these videos was to motivate the teams and keep the theme alive in order to motivate to the finish. I talked about the wins in the previous week and told the teams where we were. If we fell behind, we would talk about that as well. In each video, I singled out a person and filmed them in random locations. I use a tool called BombBomb to send emails out. Through this, I can track opens and clicks to see who is actually looking at it. The teams also have the opportunity to respond back and make comments each week. I also ordered plastic swag bags and put a logo on it that I had designed at LogoNerds. In our last swag bag, I tried to incorporate something from one of our customers. On Mondays we have our long meetings, so on Mondays, we try to drive the theme home. We talk about wins, where we can improve and where we stand in revenue. What You Need If you are looking to implement something similar, all you need is a mobile phone, maybe a tripod so you have a little more room when filming the videos, and a tool like BombBomb to track communication.   Ask your questions or share your feedback •Comment on the shownotes below •Email feedback@itprovidernetwork.com (audio files welcome) Get on the mailing list Low Volume by it is THE PLACE TO BE for all of my insider information. If you're on the list, you'll be the first to know. Signup Here Tell 'Em I Sent You If you investigate or purchase any product or service that I have talked about, please remember to mention that I sent you. I may or may not get a small commission but more importantly I hope to spread the word about the IT Provider Network. Please Subscribe Please consider Subscribing to the Podcast it is the only measure of listenership I have. Give me a Review Your written iTunes reviews encourage me and they help other people find the podcast. If you appreciate the information you are learning from the IT Provider Network then please do me a HUGE FAVOR and write a review on iTunes or on Stitcher! Connect with Me On the socials as @TerryRossi or @ITProviderNet Help a Brother Out Sign up for Coinbase Buy something from Amazon with my Affiliate Link

Drive to the Finish – Themes and how you can use them – ITPN-EP41

What do Jordi Roca, Chris Brogan, and Michael Porter have to do with your MSP? As I am sure all of you do, I get inspiration from all different kinds of places.   This week three different things caught my attention, Let me tell you the stories and then we can talk about how that applies to our businesses. Jordi Roca Jordi is the youngest of three boys and perhaps the most talented pastry chef in the world, but he wasn’t always “that guy”.   He started out as many of us do,  a little lost and just going through the motions in his brothers’ restaurant. Jordi was much younger than his two older brothers Both of which were already running a successful fine dining restaurant. Jordi worked around the restaurant essentially just doing time, putting in his shift then heading out partying all night.  He was young and to be honest really didn’t care about anything. Jordi struggled to find himself and make his mark in life.  Until one day when his boss in the restaurant had a terrible accident. He fell off a ladder and was out for an extended time.    At this time Jordi’s brothers' restaurant  L SAYYA CAAN ROCA was already a one star Michelin restaurant and they had a lot to lose. Jordi stepped up and faithfully reproduced the recipes that he mentor left in a wooden box in the restaurant.  They were good but nothing spectacular and when Jordi stepped out of his comfort zone and try to make his own dessert it was less than stellar. It wasn’t until Jordi decided to take a class on ice cream that it all changed for him. His instructor was teaching about the importance of the air in ice-cream, not just the fact that you need to have airy ice cream but also that you need to have clean air so that the ice cream doesn’t take on any off-putting flavors. Jordi thought about it on the way home and then decided to think about it another way.   What if he used the air to put flavor into the ice cream? The next morning, he went into the restaurant and as crazy as this sounds, he blew cigar smoke into the ice cream as it was being made.   After it set up he gave it to his brothers to taste and the rest is history. His “Trip to Havana” dessert as its called is now world renown.   If you order it at El Celler de Can Roca,   you’ll get what looks like a cigar-shaped ice-cream sandwich in a glass ashtray.   It looks like a cigar and the smoke-infused it heightens the experience. By the way, El Celler de Can Roca is in Spain and has been ranked the best restaurant in the world in 2013 and continues to be ranked in the top 5 restaurants in the world.  It now boasts a Michelin 3 star rating and Jordi is at the top of his game.   Jordi learned to take inspiration from everywhere and everything.   He looked outside of his environment and has reaped huge rewards because of it. Chris Brogan The second mentor I learned from this week is Chris Brogan.    If you don’t know who Chris is,  Chris is an accomplished Author of a bunch of books, including the bestseller “Trust Agents” and has spoken for or consulted with the biggest brands you know, including Disney, Coke, Google, GM, Microsoft, Sony and many more. In addition to working with the big guys Chris also does group coaching with small businesses through his Owner Insider program and that’s how I know Chris and his business partner Rob Hatch. His best free work comes out on his weekly email which he sends every Sunday.  If you want to get on this mailing list, you can do that at ChrisBrogan.com.   In this week’s newsletter, he talks about his secret to success and fame, and he has fame in air quotes although he is famous, at least internet famous ? The big takeaway from the newsletter article was one line Chris said, “I made a career out of looking at “the way things are” and then wondering “but why hasn’t anyone done ”.” He talked about how on blog after blog, podcast after podcast or coach after coach all were all preac...

What do Jordi Roca, Chris Brogan and Michael Porter have to do with your MSP?

It seems that there is a new conference for IT Service Providers almost every week and making the decision on which conference to attend can be tough.  There are big conferences,  Channel X, IT Nation, and DattoCon come to mind.    Medium size shows like Robin Robbins Bootcamp, Gary Pica's Snizzfest and Marketopia's 4U2GROW conference. I was fortunate to attend Marketopia's 4U2Grow conference for the second time a couple of weeks ago.   If you remember back to episode 31 of the IT Provider Network, Outsourcing your appointment setting, I talked about the pros and cons of outsourcing telemarketing for lead generation. I signed up with Marketopia at the 2nd annual 4U2Grow conference last year.  For MSP's they offer the normal plethora of marketing services.  Website design, Email Blasts, Pay Per Click and SEO services but their big seller for MSP and Vendors alike are callers.  1/2 time or full-time telemarketers cold calling on behalf of MSP's to end users and vendors to MSP's. Marketopia clearly is doing a bunch of things right.   This year they were named to the INC 500 list in position 232.  Marketopia,  having scaled its revenue at an impressive 2041% growth rate has joined the ranks of others on the INC 500 list including ClickFunnels (#76), KnowBe4 (#96) and Pax8 (#68). Their conference 4U2Grow and the associated roadshows are a big part of their success.  This conference for their clients and prospects is an educational event with little or no direct pitching but the Marketopia sales team are always looking to close deals at the show.  Jeff Laws and Austin McCord are gently working over their prospects and trying to make deals before the end of the show. On day one of the conference, I was asked to host a VIP Mastermind for existing Marketopia clients.  It was an intimate group of MSP's big and small from all over the county.  We talked about what's working and what isn't.   It was honest and straightforward.   If you have listened to this podcast for a while you know that I call it like it is,  if you are trying to BS me I will call you out on it. I did it, called some people out,  a few times in the MSP's mastermind and with Marketopia too.  We are in an industry that is constantly changing and I made sure I let Terry Heddon, the CEO of Marketopia know where I saw some BS in the industry but that's a whole different podcast. So what was my big takeaway from the conference?  Well, I had a few.  Most of them came from Terry Heddon or his wife Andrea but Adam Slutski formally of connectwise fame.   Here they are. 1 - We have a lot of business in our existing client base that we may not be capitalizing on.   We need to make sure we are doing our best to sell our whole stack to as much of our client base as possible. Here are strategies for increasing sales into your existing base.: Identify products or services that your client could buy but doesn’t. Develop a plan for expanding your relationship with contacts within the account. Keep trying to add value for all the contacts you know at the client. Give clients ideas on how to improve their business operations - become more efficient, more profitable and improve their customer servide. Make customers feel they have a special relationship with you. Identify your customer’s customers and help them win. 2 - We need to be more strategic in our marketing. Specifically our about us page. Did you know your website's "about us" page is the 2nd most visited page on your website second only to the home page.  Do they still call it a home page? Put some effort into your about page,  have a listen to Tools for publishing and monitoring your social media networks for some tips on your About Us page.   Also, check out Hubspot's Awesome About Us Examples for more inspiration and this great article on How to Write an About Page. Heres a couple common Mistakes You don’t have an About Page

Marketopia 4U2GROW Conference – 3 Key Takeaways

Are you getting the most out of your remote team members? In his excellent article, Rob Rawson, of the Time Doctor website.  Rob lays out 25 tips for high-performance remote teams.   In this episode of the  IT Provider Network Podcast, I am going to go through the article and give you my take on how to get the most from remote teams. Since 1994 roughly half of our team has been remote.  Always full-time W2 type employees but with the freedom to work wherever they lived. Compensate for the fact you aren’t bumping into each other. Find a way to facilitate conversation via chat and screen sharing. Don’t forget to make these members feel like a member of the team, even though they aren’t there in person. Have a chat room open at all times. You could use Skype, Teams, HipChat or Slack. Keep the Chat channel open. On that same note, don’t overload team members with chat or email. Make sure they aren’t subscribed to too many channels. Choose the communication style that is right for that member. This comes into play with homebased employees or foreign employees. Is an email, phone call, chat or video call most appropriate? Use tools like loom.com and screen sharing tools such as GoToMeeting, Zoom, etc. Video conferencing is also important. It brings the remote employee into the work space and they get to collaborate in real time with peers. This also makes everyone in the call stay more focused. Set up a daily huddle with that team member. Weekly meeting and monthly meetings are also important. Set up a communication structure for effective communication. Use tools to collaborate on documents and spreadsheets. Microsoft Office 365 or Google tools are great tools to get a document up and collaborate on it. Use a project management system. Make sure you are using it and are holding your employees accountable while ensuring they are using it and using it your way. Make sure you have systems that drive everything people do in your company. You need a standardized way of doing things that you are following and always improving that you are working with. Allow some degree of flexible works hours but have some consistent hours. People working from home typically want some flexibility in their work hours. That’s okay but you have to keep core working hours that your whole team can be working, including that remote employee. Track their work output, whether the team is working virtual or not. Measure productivity in your team. What are the indicators of success? Make sure you have communicated what you want to have done and what the measurable goal they need to accomplish is. Don’t just track it but check in regularly about the progress of their work. You might be really disappointed if you wait until the deadline. If you check in during the process, you can help negate any issues and get the team member on track, if need be. Rescue Time is a tool that can be used to track how much time you spend doing certain things each day. Organize a system of overlapping for communicating in different time zones. Have time, a good chunk of your day, where the entire team is working at the same time. Do a quarterly review to see how your team members are doing and coping with working remotely. If your company is not doing a good job of making them feel like they are a part of a team, it’s easy for them to become lonely, possibly start feeling irritated and isolated. When you are hiring new employees, always try to get a ‘try before’ you by period. Give them a short project to complete before making a commitment. Some people lie on their resume or have the ability to tell a good story in the interview process. In reality, they may not have the chops. Try to test them first and are really a good fit. Make sure you pay your virtual employees well so they will stick around and work hard for you. This is true even if this is an overseas person. It’s important to make sure they are the right fit for yo...

Tips for High Performance Remote Teams – ITPN-EP38

In today's episode of the IT Provider Network Podcast,  I am going to share a thought process that was shared with me by my coach Alex Charften.     As you know if you have been listening to the ITPN podcast for a while,  we do a lot of forward planning in our company.   We follow the Gazelles Scaling Up methodology  Each division sets "rocks" or objectives for each quarter but there never seemed to be any congruity between these rocks and the real things that needed to be improved in our company. Once I started looking at these 6 core functions our quarterly objectives really started to become dialed in. The Six Core Functions in your MSP Lead Generation - Everything you do to generate a lead.   Getting a prospect to raise a hand Lead Nurturing - What you do to nurture that lead and turn them into a customer Conversion - After the prospect has told you they are a buyer - what you do to propose and close the deal Delivery - What you do after the signed contract or PO is received  - the steps you take to deliver your service Retention - The processes and procedure you use to keep your clients.  In an MSP this would be the work of the service and VCIO type teams Resell and Upsell - What are you doing to get your clients to buy more of your products and services - usually the work of your account manager.   Start looking at these 6 core functions in your business.   Rate them from 1-5 and revisit that rating every 90 days or so.   Start working on the lower scoring functions that are at the top of the list.  In other words, if Lead Generation and Retention are your problems work on lead generation first. If you concentrating on any efforts in your company that don't directly help improve these core functions, you are probably floundering.     Ask your questions or share your feedback •Comment on the shownotes below •Email feedback@itprovidernetwork.com (audio files welcome) Get on the mailing list Low Volume by it is THE PLACE TO BE for all of my insider information. If you're on the list, you'll be the first to know. Signup Here Tell 'Em I Sent You If you investigate or purchase any product or service that I have talked about, please remember to mention that I sent you. I may or may not get a small commission but more importantly I hope to spread the word about the IT Provider Network. Please Subscribe Please consider Subscribing to the Podcast it is the only measure of listenership I have. Give me a Review Your written iTunes reviews encourage me and they help other people find the podcast. If you appreciate the information you are learning from the IT Provider Network then please do me a HUGE FAVOR and write a review on iTunes or on Stitcher! Connect with Me On the socials as @TerryRossi or @ITProviderNet Help a Brother Out Sign up for Coinbase Buy something from Amazon with my Affiliate Link I put these down here in case you are looking for anything from Amazon, I get a small commission if you click-thru from this site. You don't have to buy these items just click through from this page. Thanks in advance!

6 core functions you need to pay attention to in your MSP business ITPN-EP37

In this episode of the IT Provider Network Podcast, I am going to share an exercise with did to determine where our Purple Ocean lies.     Join me as I talk about through the process of finding your USP or Unique Selling Position and how it can help you get more deals. The strategy I talk about in this podcast is from the book Blue Ocean Strategy available on Amazon. Ask your questions or share your feedback •Comment on the shownotes below •Email feedback@itprovidernetwork.com (audio files welcome) Get on the mailing list Low Volume by it is THE PLACE TO BE for all of my insider information. If you're on the list, you'll be the first to know. Signup Here Tell 'Em I Sent You If you investigate or purchase any product or service that I have talked about, please remember to mention that I sent you. I may or may not get a small commission but more importantly I hope to spread the word about the IT Provider Network. Please Subscribe Please consider Subscribing to the Podcast it is the only measure of listenership I have. Give me a Review Your written iTunes reviews encourage me and they help other people find the podcast. If you appreciate the information you are learning from the IT Provider Network then please do me a HUGE FAVOR and write a review on iTunes or on Stitcher! Connect with Me On the socials as @TerryRossi or @ITProviderNet Help a Brother Out Sign up for Coinbase Buy something from Amazon with my Affiliate Link I put these down here in case you are looking for anything from Amazon, I get a small commission if you click-thru from this site. You don't have to buy these items just click through from this page. Thanks in advance!  

Finding your USP in a Purple Ocean

In today's episode of the IT Provider Network, I want to talk about one of our most important assets and one that is often neglected. I would bet that many of you are like me in your business, you sell hardware and software to your clients when they have needs.   They call or write to you when they have a new user and need a new computer.  You might even have your VCIO call on them to drum up hardware refreshes or new technology initiatives but I’ll bet that you can’t tell me all your clients know about all your offerings. Today I want to talk about some ways that you can market to and capitalize on our greatest assets – our clients. Your Best Prospects Are Your Existing Clients Your best prospects are your existing client.  If you have been marketing only to cold or warm prospects then you are missing a big segment of buyers that are already buying from you. Take some of your marketing efforts and work on reselling, upselling and cross-selling into your existing client base. I know that I have not done a great job having a formal, consistent marketing plan for our installed base.   I just realized that not only do our clients not know about all of our offerings but all of our team members don’t either! Heres some new strategies to try get your hands around this often overlooked segment of your business.   Try This   Keep in Touch – It’s important to have regular communication with your clients, and I think it should be a multi-faceted approach to outreach. The owner, the sales team and the service team should all have regularly scheduled outreach to the base.   The medium for these touches can and probably should be varied.   For example, the VCIO might send out a monthly email,  The service manager might have a quarterly call with the power users and the owner to owner communications might be face to face meetings or a lunch along with regular calls or letters. Reassure Them on their Purchases – Every time a client purchases something from you, follow up with them after the purchase to reassure them of the purchase. This is also a great time to make sure there are service related issues.    If your terms are Net 30 make this call about 15 days in to make sure the client is happy and the product or service you delivered and the invoice is top of mind. Give your Clients the Best Deals – Doesn’t make you crazy when you hear your cable TV provider offering great new customer deals on TV. Doesn’t it make you question why they don’t value your business,  you know the customer that has been with them for 5 years?   Well, your clients feel this way too. Let them have it First - Extend your best offers to your existing clients and do it before you announce it to the world.  People want to be valued and they always want to be let in on a secret or a private sale. Remember the Golden Rule – Always work to build rapport and continued trust with your base. This is where some of the multi-faceted communication can come into play.     Remember people do business with people they know and trust.  If you want some tips on building rapport I recommend you listen to Building Rapport with Employees, Prospects and Customers – ITPN-EP003   Be Real and Consistent   Be real and consistent and start doing this right after the sale.   As part of your onboarding procedure make sure you include a follow-up to their first purchase   Make sure you thank them for the purchase Re-affirm the value of your company Reassure them that signing up for your service was the right move, it make economic sense and this is the start of a long term relationship   Make sure you write this thank you in your authentic voice.  Use this thank you note as a way to tell the buyer you will be contacting him from time to time to alert him of things important to their business.   Strive to show your passion for providing great service and the fact that you truly value their business.

Your Best Prospects Are Your Existing Clients ITPN-EP35

Visioning Update I wanted to give you an update on the visioning process that my company went through two weeks ago when we met on the tail end of the Gazelles spring summit in New Orleans.   I detailed what visioning is and why you need it in episode 33 of the IT Provider Network but in case you missed it here is a quick overview. Visioning is looking into to the future and describing what success looks like then. At that point in time.   It’s now the how to; it’s the motivation and the direction. It is what success then looks and feels like in the future. A successful visioning document should be • Inspiring. To everyone that will be involved in implementing it. • Strategically sound. That is, we have a decent shot at making it happen. • Documented. You need to write your vision down to make it work. • Communicated. Not only do you have record your vision but if you want it to be effective, you have to tell people about it too. So we set out to create our first vision for the company 24 years after we started it. Our senior management team is made up of 7 people, so the way we started the process was by deciding on a time frame,  for us it was 2022 and that we were going to be visioning for the whole company, not any single division or department. Then we all went off and wrote. I encouraged people to think positive about what was possible and to be free with their ideas.    We all handed them in anonymously to our coach who compiled them and sent them back to us combined to review before we met in New Orleans. Once we all got together for our onsite meeting, we put the combined document up in a google doc.   We read each visioning entry and highlighted parts and pieces that really resonated with us. It was awesome to see how seven different people, most of who have been with our company for 10+ years had different desires and direction for the company.   Some addressed specific product directions,  others staff size, and what the office space looked like in 2022.   It was fascinating to get everyone's viewpoint, and we were able to pull some great things out of every person's document. So once we had a bunch of highlighted sections, we tasked three people to craft them into three parts of a new document.   The first part about overall company vision highlights,  the second for our software development division and the third for visioning specific to the managed services division.   Once we have this combined document, we will hone it and redraft it then share it with our staff. To give you an idea, here are some of the highlighted phrases that'll  be shaped into the next draft. "We have created a culture and work environment that has attracted some of the best developers and network engineers in the area and have continued to build upon our mission of being our clients “Partner in Technology." "Education is a key part of our culture and our business - it comes to life through ongoing internal and external training for our staff, customers and business partners." "We have worked hard to build multipliers in the organization and that is paying off in large dividends, by having an empowered workforce." "MRR is our life blood, the LTV of our clients allows us to spend quite a bit of time, money and effort to keep a client." "Our recurring revenue stream has increased 400% since 2018 with the addition of the new service offerings sold as an annual subscription." "The management team, regardless of their location, still follows its roots and meets daily to make sure that PICS is always growing and evolving." " We have started a foundation that donates a portion of our profits to charity.   In addition, the foundation does many community projects to enrich the lives of employees and of those around us.  " So I hope some of these statements inspire you.  I know they inspired me!   Get going with a visioning project in your company.

Is this a six-inch putt? ITPN-EP34

Visioning and the Deli Man If you’re on the IT Provider Network mailing list you know that tomorrow at 5 am I am heading out to New Orleans for some team building and to soak in some fresh ideas at the Gazelles Summit. Come Together Because my management team is in 4 different states and three different time zones it’s going to take the better part of Monday to get everyone down south. We’ll get settled in then on Tuesday and Wednesday, the team along with our Gazelles Coach Doug Diamond will be at the summit. The Gazelles Scaling Up Summit The summit, or more formally, the Scaling Up Summit is tailored to business owners interested in growing their companies. Over the course of two days, we will learn from award-winning authors. Soak up some techniques and methods for building better leadership, strategy, marketing, sales, operations, and finance. We will be in a room full of mid-market firms representing a variety of industries ($5 million to $500 million), for great interactive learning, networking, and idea-generation. This summit will be my second Gazelles event, and I am looking forward to it. I encourage you to attend events that are outside of the IT Industry to keep growing your company. Then on Thursday, we have rented a private conference room, and the eight of us are going to go heads down into a visioning exercise. So that’s what I want to talk with you about today. Visioning, why you would want to do this and how you can do it in your company. About Ari Weinzweig At my first Gazelles Summit in 2016, I met Ari Weinzweig. He spoke on Leadership, and I purchased all his books. Ari is one of the co-founders of the Zimmerman Community of Businesses, some food-centric businesses in the Ann Arbor Michigan area of the united states. What started as a 1300 square foot deli in 1982 is now a 60 million dollar business with the deli still at the heart of it. For more information on Zingermans check out their About Us page. The Zingermans Community of Business or ZCOB employees over 600 people and now is over ten different food-related businesses. You don’t grow a deli into a 60 million dollar business like that without visioning. About My Grandson Visioning is kind of like Walt Disney’s Imagineering, or for a better everyday example, it is what every young child does when they daydream. They never think about what’s NOT possible only what is possible. When my grandson Liam, who just turned four, is visioning he is building massive Lego cities, and waging battles with Batman and Joker. He doesn’t question batman's superpowers he assumes that he has them. Visioning works the same way. It’s looking to the future and describing what success looks like then. It’s now the how to; it’s the motivation and the direction. It is what success then looks and feels like in the future. Ari describes a successful vision as • Inspiring. To everyone that will be involved in implementing it. • Strategically sound. That is, we have a decent shot at making it happen. • Documented. You e need to write your vision down to make it work. • Communicated. Not only do you have record your vision but if you want it to be effective, you actually have to tell people about it too. This is the How not the Why Step 1: Pick your Visioning Topic Because visioning can be used for just about anything, it's important to start by being clear about what you're working on. Next week the PICS Team is looking out to 2022, and we are visioning on the whole company. If you start using visioning for your company you could do visioning on the company, a division or department, a project or even a smaller event. The process is the same; you want to see what success looks like before you execute. For most MSP’s, visioning should probably start at the organization or company level. Step 2: Pick your visioning time frame As we discussed in step one after you pick the topic, you need to choose the period of time where you want to describe suc...

Visioning – Why you need it and how to do it. ITPN-EP33

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