These MSP 501ers Want You to Learn from Their Mistakes
Even the top MSPs around the globe mess up from time to time.
![Business mistake, headache Business mistake, headache](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt10e444bce2d36aa8/blt975f51cfe618b69d/65245dbb4db25574677790a0/Business-Mistake-Headache-2018.jpg?width=700&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale)
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“I have found that hiring a person with a good, positive personality always works out better than hiring a resume. You can teach people new skills, but you can’t retrain someone’s personality. And a bad apple is like cancer to your organization. We hired a lot of “resumes” (people who had the technical skills we needed) early on, but didn’t really focus on personalities. One bad apple that we had the unfortunate experience of hiring, who by the way was a genius technician, ended up being so toxic with the rest of our team, that several good people quit before I realized I had to get rid of the bad apple. Not fun.”
—Adam A. Fadhli, president, Discovery Information Technologies
“The one thing that we have learned over the years is in regard to hiring and culture. We have learned how to hire for the right reasons and not necessarily for technical talent. I would rather have a tier 1 tech come on board that we have to train and is eager to learn more so than a seasoned tech that is not going to fit into our culture. We have learned how to be patient with our hiring and take the time to fully flesh out the candidates form a culture perspective first.”
—Aaron Tuomala, CEO, Method Technologies
“You can’t be all things to all people. Back in the day I thought that ANY customer was worth bringing on — even if they didn’t exactly fit our picture of a perfect customer for us. We were willing to make exceptions, design one-off service plans, ignore our core value proposition all in the race to add revenue. This turned out to be a horrible idea – the customers who aren’t a fit and whose needs don’t match up with what you do uniquely – they overrun your organization, make incredible demands, stress your people and generally cause havoc. It wasn’t until we narrowed our focus and started being picky about the customers we took on were we able to start gaining traction and delivering on our mission.”
—Eric Hobbs, CEO, Technology Associates
“At one moment at time, despite having qualified engineers, our actionable ticket count wouldn’t stop growing. Hiring, while an option, wouldn’t have made an immediate effect, and we weren’t willing to let customer service fall more than we were afraid it was. Using the same team but putting daily measurables in place that were shown off to the entire team each morning, provided clear direction and peer accountability. Our productivity is up, even though we’ve on-boarded several new clients. We’ve now applied this lesson to every position in our company, from leadership to the newest engineer.”
—Abbey Renee Colville, director of operations, Vision Computer Solutions
“With clients, we learned the hard way that it’s really important that they understand and are on board with our vision. We had to make a conscious decision to only bring on clients that understand our value and the benefits that we can bring to their business. The ones who don’t get it, or who fight our pricing right from the start, are typically not the right fit for our business. We learned to pass on those clients and focus our efforts on exceeding the expectations of our current clients while making space for future clients that will be the right fit for our business model in the future.”
—Phillip Poarch, vice president, Tolar Systems
“Standardize the technology stack you offer to your customers (and make sure it is comprised of best of breed products), and then become subject-matter experts in those specific technologies. This will make your execution consistent, efficient and excellent. Before we had developed a standardized technology stack for our customers, we were supporting a hodgepodge of disparate technologies, and there was no way we could be experts in all of them. The result was poor service, inefficient execution, and low profitability. Standardization was the only way to fix this.”
—Adam A. Fadhli, president, Discovery Information Technologies
“When quoting [clients] monthly service fees, you see them haggling. Then when it comes to quoting equipment, you quote the cheaper options for servers, desktops, networking, etc. But then when you deploy those cheaper options, something doesn’t go right: The laptops are too slow (because you quoted Core i3 procs and 4GB RAM instead of i5’s with 8GB); the Wi-Fi isn’t working properly (because you quoted 802.11g/n instead of a/c); the server runs out of space quickly (because you quoted only one TB of space when they ended up needing two or three). Then you’re stuck with your foot in your mouth when the client says, ‘We went with your recommendations and here we are and things aren’t working well.’
The safer option is to quote them a good/better/best, or at least a good/better model. ‘Hey Mr. Client, I’ve put together two options for you. With the cheaper option, I think you’ll get by, but it may not scale the way you’d like it to. With the more expensive option, I’m building in room for future growth, and giving you more (space/resources) than what you need to make sure this lasts into the future.’”
—Eli Webster, president and CEO, Creative Technology Solutions
We for a long time ran with an in-house CRM solution, and were using multiple applications to manage different parts of the business. This cost us in lost billings, subscription renewals. Once we identified this flaw, we went and found a process application that manages every part of our business, which helped us streamline all our departments using one application, resulting in increased service billings, increased subscription renewals and increased efficiencies in operations.
—Omer Choudhary, CEO, IQ Interactive
AppSmart enjoyed a busy 2020, which included a significant amount of M&A.
The group acquired Georgia-based MicroCorp last December. MicroCorp joined CNSG, Telegration and WTG as master agents that have joined AppSmart.
AppSmart enjoyed a busy 2020, which included a significant amount of M&A.
The group acquired Georgia-based MicroCorp last December. MicroCorp joined CNSG, Telegration and WTG as master agents that have joined AppSmart.
Every successful business is built through a process of trial and error, but we don’t really have a road map in the managed-services world. People have been selling cars, clothes and even computers for ages, but managed service providers (MSPs) are still trying to figure out the wonky world of outsourced IT.
It’s unavoidable then that there will be hiccups, missteps and lessons learned the hard way when figuring out the right MSP business model, but success can only be built on the back of failure. After all, how do you definitively know a business decision is the wrong one until you make it and see how it plays out? All good businesses are essentially a long series of trial and error followed (hopefully) by triumph and revenue. If you’re looking for proof of this, cast your gaze upon our 2018 MSP 501. The managed service providers that earn a place on the Channel Futures annual ranking list are the best and the brightest in the world, and here they open up about where they went wrong and what they learned from messing up.
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