B2B vs B2C and What it Means for Your MSP

There is no shortage of articles explaining the differences between B2B (business-to-business) and B2C (business-to-consumer) business models. A simple online search will make this clear. Most of these articles highlight the same basic contrasts:

• The B2B sales cycle lasts longer/is costlier than that of B2C
• B2B relies on long-term client relationships; B2C tends to involve single ‘one-and-done’ transactions
• Compared to B2C businesses, B2B businesses target a smaller, niche prospective client base
• B2B sales and marketing should appeal to reason; B2C sales and marketing should play to emotion
• B2B involves engaging with multiple stakeholders and decision-makers within an organization; B2C involves selling to individuals

Instead of belaboring these points, we want to home in on one in particular, which is especially relevant to managed service providers (MSPs), namely, the idea that B2B sales and marketing tactics should appeal to clients’ reason instead of their emotions. There is some truth to this claim, but as we’ll see, it’s an oversimplification, which, taken the wrong way, could undermine or even derail your MSP’s efforts to attract, win, and hold onto clients.

Before we look at the idea that B2B sales and marketing should appeal to reason, let’s quickly review the basic definitions of B2B and B2C, and establish which type of model describes the commercial activities of MSPs.

B2B vs B2C: A Brief Overview

B2B is an acronym that wears its meaning on its sleeve: business-to-business is a type of sales process that involves businesses selling products/services to other businesses. B2C is equally straightforward: a business-to-consumer retail model is what it sounds like — businesses selling products/services directly to individual consumers.

An MSP is an example of a B2B business, as it offers outsourced IT support to businesses, not individual consumers. Thus, MSPs should implement sales and marketing strategies that align with the core principles of the B2B model. But what are these principles, and just how sound are they?

There isn’t space here to discuss the various aspects of B2B marketing. So, instead, we’ll be looking closely at one in particular: the idea that B2B sales and marketing should appeal to existing and prospective clients’ reason, in contrast to B2C sales and marketing efforts, which ought to play to emotion.

This is a common trope when it comes to discussions of B2B vs B2C best practices, but it’s not the golden nugget of truth it’s often held up to be. The following discussion aims to introduce some nuance into the idea that B2B marketing is all about reason, not emotion. The goal is to give your MSP a more balanced understanding of the topic at hand, so that you can sell and market your services more effectively than ‘the next MSP.’

The Standard View: B2B is ‘All Business’

The idea that B2B marketing should be ‘strictly business’ makes intuitive sense. After all, we are talking about business-to-business transactions here! But all kidding aside, the idea that B2B marketing should appeal to clients’ reason — i.e., their ability to think rationally and objectively — does mesh with certain realities. Let’s look at two such realities . . .

Higher Stakes

When you’re a business selling to another business, the stakes are usually higher than they would be if you were selling a product or service to an individual consumer. As an MSP, your primary objective is to demonstrate that your IT services will constitute a sound investment for your prospective client’s business. The organizations that you’re marketing and selling to want to know that hiring you will be a good business decision with a healthy ROI (return on investment).

This means you have to prop up your pitch with plenty of numbers and cold hard facts. Your pool of leads won’t choose your MSP because you have a nice smile or a firm handshake — though those things can help — but because you’re going to save them time, money, and resources.

So, when selling and marketing your MSP’s services and support model, you want to focus on establishing the strategic advantages that your potential clients can achieve by hiring you.

Longer and More Complex Sales Process

Another reason why B2B sales and marketing need to appeal to reason has to do with a key feature of the B2B sales process: as a business selling/marketing to other businesses, your path to converting a lead into a customer is longer, and requires engagement with multiple stakeholders and decision-makers within an organization.

Think about your MSP. Generally speaking, you’re not going to win a new client by convincing one person that your MSP is great; you’re going to have to win the respect and trust of various key decision-makers — executives, in-house IT staff, and so forth.

What does this have to do with the reason/emotion distinction?

A lot! Unlike B2C transactions, which can capitalize on individual consumers’ in-the-moment impulses and emotions, a successful B2B transaction usually requires that you secure a “yes” from multiple people, over an extended period of time. And such a thing is only possible if you convince your prospective clients that working with your MSP is actually a sensible idea — i.e., that it makes good business sense.

An Alternative Perspective: Emotions Matter Too!

Now that we’ve seen some reasons to think that your MSP, as a B2B operation, needs to appeal to potential clients’ “rational side” to win business, we can begin pushing back on this view with some considerations in favor of a more “emotional” approach.

Consideration #1: B2B and B2C are Both P2P!

With all of the business jargon, it’s easy to get lost in a sea of acronyms and forget one simple truth: whether you’re an MSP selling IT services to small-to-medium sized businesses (SMBs) or a scalper hawking tickets on the sidewalk, at the end of the day, it’s people selling to people. And people aren’t purely rational — no matter how hard we try! Our decisions are based largely on emotion.

So, if you’re an MSP, yes, you need to demonstrate your value to potential clients using facts and figures, but you can’t neglect the vital task of making the people you speak with feel comfortable, listened to, cared for, etc. The fact is, people will trust you more if you’re personable, friendly, and warm, and when a prospective client is on the fence about hiring your MSP, they are likely to fall back on instinct. You want that instinct to be that you’re a good person who genuinely cares about cultivating relationships with your clients.

Consideration #2: The Stakes are High!

Wait, didn’t we mention “higher stakes” as a reason your MSP needs to appeal to your potential clients’ rationality?

Yep! But the fact that stakes are typically higher in B2B transactions (compared to B2C transactions) is also a reason why you can’t neglect the emotional side of the equation. Choosing to work with an MSP is a big business decision that has the potential to go extremely well or extremely poorly for your prospective clients. The emotional intensity of such a decision is much, much greater than, say, that which accompanies purchasing a stick of gum.

For that reason, your MSP’s role — a role that you and your staff all have to take on — is to recognize your prospective clients’ anxieties, fears, and uncertainties, and then, do your best to alleviate those feelings. To do that, you have to connect on a human level. If you can truly listen to the business owners you engage with, instead of viewing them merely as a potential paycheck, it will help your MSP stand out in a crowded and competitive industry. In the same spirit, learn to accept a “no” without any resentment, because oftentimes a “no” is really a “not yet.” Never leave potential clients with a bad taste in their mouths after a pitch, because you want them to remember you fondly if their circumstances change and they decide that working with an MSP — or a different MSP — is a good idea after all.

Consideration #3: Not Everyone is Fluent in Techspeak

MSPs provide IT services to all manner of businesses, many of which aren’t a part of the IT world. Naturally, then, the decision-makers you or your sales team speak with won’t always be well-versed in the jargon that rolls so naturally of your tongue. It’s true that you want to establish technical expertise and an in-depth knowledge of your MSP’s offerings, as well as how those offerings tie into your prospective clients’ business objectives. But, at the same time, leaning too hard into “techspeak” can have the adverse effect of overwhelming, confusing, or even angering your leads. Be wary of falling into

the trap of trying to impress with fancy terminology, when a simple explanation would be more effective and powerful.

This consideration ties into the previous one. Many of the decision-makers you speak with are going to be feeling anxious about outsourcing their IT. Dumping a truckload of jargon on their heads is hardly going to help. You want to be professional and make it obvious that you know your stuff when it comes to IT, but your conversation with potential clients needs to be just that — a conversation! Don’t talk at leads; talk to them, and in terms they can easily understand.

This also applies to your marketing collateral. Make sure it’s not too heavy on jargon, and develop an overarching brand identity or story with universal, human appeal. If your only selling points are technical, you’re going to be in trouble. The MSP space is simply too crowded and competitive for your company to stand out without branding that resonates with fellow tech people and the technophobic alike.

Concluding Remarks

As a B2B enterprise, your MSP will win new clients by taking them through a long-term sales cycle, in which you answer their questions, provide them with plenty of information, and demonstrate your value in clear, quantitative terms. In short, you have to earn prospective clients’ trust by speaking to their rational side, because no one’s going to hire an MSP just because it ‘feels right’ or ‘seems like a good idea in the moment.’

That said, you have to do all of that with a human touch, making sure to cultivate a personal connection. If you try to ‘argue’ your way to new clients by presenting your MSP’s value in purely technical terms, you can easily lose precious leads by failing to tap into the most powerful motivator of all: emotion.

If you’re an MSP that struggles with sales and marketing, we encourage you to reach out to us. Here at The 20, we help MSPs conquer sales, marketing, and a host of other challenges that commonly hold MSPs back. Learn more about what we do, and how our revolutionary business model can take your business to the next level.

Leading MSP organization The 20 proudly announces the promotion of Donna Pebworth to Chief Financial Officer.

Donna joined The 20 in August 2018 as Financial Controller, with responsibilities of financial reporting, accounting, budgeting, and HR/payroll within the organization. She brings more than 20 years of leadership experience in accounting and finance, and previously served as Controller for companies including The Gough Group, Brown+Company, Elevate Group Holdings, Spirit International and Urology Clinics of North Texas.

“Since joining The 20, Donna has played a critical role in the growth and success of our company, demonstrating her expertise in business, human resources and financial strategy. Her promotion is reflective of her dedicated leadership and contributions across finance and accounting,” said Tim Conkle, CEO of The 20.

As CFO, Donna will continue to lead and directly manage the overall planning of The 20’s financial affairs.

“It’s exciting to be part of this new chapter in The 20’s successful journey,” Pebworth said. “The company is growing into expanded markets, and there will be new systems implemented and new people to collaborate with as we continue to optimize our financial operations.”

Donna Pebworth rounds out The 20’s executive leadership team, which includes Tim Conkle – Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Ken Pecot – Chief Operating Officer (COO), Jeff Griffin – Chief Information Officer (CIO), Crystal McFerran – Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), Mark Elliott – Chief Revenue Officer (CRO), and Ciera Cole – Chief Experience Officer (CXO).

About The 20
The 20 is an exclusive business development group for Managed Service Providers (MSPs) aimed at dominating and revolutionizing the IT industry with its standardized all-in-one approach. The 20’s robust RMM, PSA, and documentation platform ensures superior service for MSP clients utilizing their completely US-based Help Desk and Network Operations Center. Extending beyond cutting-edge tools and processes, The 20 touts a proven sales model, a community of industry leaders, and ultimate scalability. To learn more, visit The20.com.

By Tim Conkle,  CEO of The 20

Break-fix is a dirty word in IT, especially for established MSPs. It’s also the model most MSPs grew up with. Break-fix pulls more money out of the technical process for better and for worse, but it also stifles growth at scale. While your business may have moved away from break-fix proper, what services do you offer which still qualify as break-fix in ideology?

In the beginning, a transactional model might be the best as you focus on ironing out what your business does and building a reputation. But, as you grow, you need to move away from transactional sales to focus on building contracts. A contract means that you are putting your faith in a continued involvement and making costs more predictable for both you and your client. It’s also a test of faith for your client on whether you have educated them enough to trust what you’re doing for them.

Let’s go over what makes up a break-fix mindset, why it is a net negative in most situations, why there is nuance to needing some break-fix options, how to reframe your SLA (Service Level Agreements), how to get out of break-fix, and how to scale your business.

Breaking Down Break-Fix

The break-fix model is most simply: If it breaks, we fix it. This can be computers, networking gear, software, etc. You’re willing to charge a rate per unit of time in order to perform work to rectify some specific issue.

This principle can be abstracted further with project rates and work which isn’t rolled into a service offering. Even large MSPs which normally only work on contracts will still have some level of break-fix options. This can be do to the fact the “service” isn’t economically viable, or even as an anchor to make the service feel more valuable (e.g. the anchor for break-fix is near the cost of the service, one is predictable, the other isn’t).

Project work outside of the scope of your SLA contract can be an example of a break-fix principle in your process. You’re trading time to fix a problem. Sometimes, it makes sense, for instance, most people don’t buy flood insurance if they live on a high hill; they just eat the cost. The water doesn’t reach them except once in a lifetime if then.

Sometimes, break-fix ideas bleed into areas we aren’t familiar. Some MSPs have rates for tangential services they aren’t as confident in. It’s hard to compute a fair price if you don’t what the end results look like or what the average costs or. It can be just as true if you don’t know what the range looks like versus the average.

Why Break-Fix Breaks

As you onboard a contract client and shore up their issues, you put the bulk of the work in the beginning and ideally make their technology just work for them while collecting a fee to maintain it. When you do break-fix, you just fix the issues from before and then they don’t see why they need a technical service provider until the problems mount up again. Computers are new in business even though they’ve been here for a full generation.

A small MSP will break-fix a client into where a competing MSP can win them over. They did the painful onboarding day and night so that someone else could get money per month to do virtually nothing. Automation and proactive alerting make a difference between a client costing you a few hours and days or weeks of downtime. When you do things right, a contract means an expensive onboarding then a huge reduction in cost and pure profit.

Small MSPs can’t afford it, but as you scale, you can’t afford not to. A contract means that you throw all of your resources or a sizable amount into the onboarding, and then you just collect the proceeds to make things keep working. Everyone is happy because most businesses plan around a fixed cost for support or similar over a yearly period.

An amortized $10k is less expensive to an established business than a $5k surprise. The cost in risk reduction is worth more than the extra cost per amortized month for certain industries. Risk adverse businesses are usually resilient to most changes and are typically more dependable for invoices.

You can support a start-up, or you can support a static company. One may not grow, but your team might which means more of the same type of static companies is more profit for less cooperative effort. As you stabilize, so does your expectation of the clients you support. In the B2B space, the business type you support becomes the foundation of your existence.

Why Break/Fix Works

Break-fix wouldn’t be the common model if it didn’t work sometimes. It’s not ideal at scale, but it works with certain services and tasks. When you’re just getting started, it’s an easy way to bring in income with limited resources. They need a fix and you’re there for a weekend.

As your team builds up, break-fix becomes less effective. You have far more resources and the spikes in utilization become rounded out with averages for spikes in labor. As your MSP thrives, the rough weekends largely disappear and the stress becomes constant but predictable. As you scale, your problems become more logistical rather than existential.

That said, there are still plenty of use cases where the logistics or pricing just doesn’t make sense for a service proper. You may be supporting something which is extremely unpredictable and extremely uncommon to the point customers are upset paying for it. Other offerings just don’t work as a service which a business can justify unless it’s one of their core competencies.

The break-fix methodology should be removed from your core offerings, but it’s fine to have some of these offerings as a way to offload certain tasks. If you do cabling, it really wouldn’t make sense as an independent service since 90% or more of what will ever be done at most businesses is done in the first month (most places don’t go back and upgrade until they absolutely have to, which can be literally decades). The appeal of a service is to reduce the perceived cost, but who would subscribe to a service they’ll never use more than once unless they have to?

Reframing SLAs

We mentioned cabling and similar, but most MSPs will round these tasks into part of the onboarding service (within reason). You may not be able to sell something as a separate service, but you can offer a break-fix solution and a tier which rounds in some amount into your main service. Not everyone will bite, but the ones who do are now paying more for something that already happened and the promise to keep it maintained.

Your SLA (Service Level Agreement) with a client impacts what you are expected to do and what is expected of you. While these two concepts should be the same, they can end up as not depending on how your client understands technology. The more things which are out of the scope of a contract, the more likely a client is to feel they’re being nickel and dimed out of money.

How can you package things into a service so they only need to come up once during the sales process? Sell them once and offer ways to buy up as they see just how expensive ad-hoc really is. Done right, you’re rewarding your business and your client for you doing things right the first time. They get everything done the right way from day one and a lot more work for the cost of the first few months, and you get paid to make sure new changes don’t break anything once you set everything up.

With this move comes the need to level up how you handle your business process so that it can scale with what you sell. B2B sales cost more time and effort to get going, but end up with greater potential. Save yourself the headache of a client being angry they have to pay more and just charge from the get-go. As long as both parties understand and agree, it’s a net win for everyone.

Moving Past Break/Fix

Some clients aren’t going to want to sign new contracts or change how they do business. If you’ve been doing break-fix for a while, these clients only pop up when they need new machines onboarded or in the event of emergencies. The expected income for these clients plummets drastically. On the flip side, there is also an opportunity in these scenarios.

Break-fix costs more as you scale. You need to have the resources and logistics to properly handle the ebbs and flows in the labor and it can even end up costing money in certain periods. You may even be contractually unable to take new clients because you’re stuck handling a one-off problem for a break-fix client that is eating all of your bandwidth. If you don’t have an explicit contract for the price, price yourself out. This either gets you out of doing the less predictable work (freeing you up for more favorable contracts), gets someone throwing money at the problem making it worth the extra hassle, or it can even be a price anchor for contract upsells.

Don’t violate your contract or what you’re expected to do, but do make it clear you prefer service based pricing. It works out better for both parties and can even be worth giving previous clients a discount to get them moved over.

Make your new contracts focus on service delivery. Market based on the fact the clients don’t need to worry. Highlight the mundane aspects and turn them into points of safety and security. This type of marketing is harder, but the right drip campaign and the right tactics mean it just takes time and effort to win the right contracts. Let your customer rest well knowing you’ll be there to help them and that you’ll continue to get an income that justifies putting all of the hard work forward from the first onboarding.

Scaling Past Break-Fix

Once you start moving away from break-fix, you’ll probably feel some pressure in the beginning with onboardings which quickly goes away as the site is squared away. In the beginning, you need to control the rate you’re onboarding new clients to make sure each gets the right experience. It pays dividends to measure twice and cut once with new onboardings so the client is happy and you barely need to do anything to continue supporting them from an infrastructure level.

Break-fix is too unpredictable to properly scale. As you grow, it becomes untenable as you either need to keep onboarding or need to hope that clients continue to have work. Either pattern is untenable versus income which is no longer tied to the raw hours you need to put out.

What are you doing to grow and scale your business from the model it started with? How are you removing break-fix patterns or leveraging the ones which can’t be changed? There are going to be things you do which clients need which don’t make sense as standalone services, but you need to know what they are and why it’s true. As your sales go from transactional exchanges of time and expertise for money into a service, the value and security of a contract goes up for both you and your prospective client.

The 20 is an exclusive business development group of MSPs aimed at dominating and revolutionizing the IT industry with its standardized all-on-approach. Growing a successful MSP requires a lot more than technological prowess, and The 20 offers a robust RMM, PSA, and documentation platform, along with proven processes for sales and marketing, to help MSPs not only separate themselves from the herd, but leave it in the dust. Instead of assembling all the moving parts your MSP needs in a piecemeal fashion, join The 20 and get them all in one convenient package. Contact us to learn more about what The 20 does and how we can help your MSP achieve monumental revenue generation and unprecedented profitability and growth.

Four Cybersecurity Tips for a Safe and Secure 2022

We are in the last week of Cybersecurity Awareness Month, an observance started in 2004 by the National Cyber Security Alliance and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Now in its 18th year, the annual awareness effort has grown into a powerful campaign that serves to energize and educate the general public, while giving institutions and enterprises the guidance and tools they need to keep their data safe, and their people protected. The theme for Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2021 is “Do Your Part. #BeCyberSmart.”

This is a powerful message, and one that is crucial at this juncture in history. The past decade — and the past several years especially — has seen an explosion in the prevalence, sophistication, and destructiveness of cyberattacks, with the Covid pandemic only exacerbating what was already a serious problem.

Things aren’t going to get any easier, either. In fact, experts predict that cybercrime costs will steadily rise over the next several years and exceed $10 billion by 2025. Fueled by success, emboldened by new technologies, and in some cases, backed by nation-states, cybercriminals are certainly gearing up for a busy year. Cybercrime isn’t going anywhere. But here’s the thing . . .

Neither are we. MSPs aren’t going anywhere, nor is their commitment to keeping their clients and their data safe. The IT industry as a whole isn’t going anywhere, and there are a lot of us, willing to fight the good fight and keep threat actors at bay. The United States isn’t going anywhere, nor is the global community in which America plays a vital role. This brings us back to the theme of Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2021, and why it’s so apt and timely.

We — individuals, institutions, businesses, communities, countries — can’t afford to treat cybercrime as a purely technological issue with no direct connection to daily life, or more simply, ‘not my problem.’ It is all of our jobs to keep cyberspace from being overrun with nefarious activity. If we all do our part and stay smart, we can win this fight. But we can’t hesitate or hedge our bets — it’s time to go all in!

The Role of MSPs

Managed service providers (MSPs) are in a unique position to lead the fight against cybercrime. By making cybersecurity a priority and an integral part of operations and internal culture, MSPs can inspire their client businesses to do the same. This will have ripple effects that strengthen our entire country’s security posture.

So, let’s get smart and do our part. Here are four cybersecurity tips for MSP Owners going into 2022.

Tip #1 – Adopt a Culture-First Mentality

When it comes to cybersecurity, there’s a temptation to immediately think about technical solutions: the right tools and software with which to protect your MSP business, and by extension, your clients’ businesses. But given that the overwhelming majority of data breaches involve a human element (i.e., human error), it makes sense to think about cybercrime as a human/social problem, calling for a cultural solution (i.e., a shift in thinking).

Establishing a culture of cybersecurity awareness might sound like a vague undertaking — something you agree with in theory, but which seems like it wouldn’t amount to much in practice. But this couldn’t be farther from the truth.

Building a robust cybersecurity culture at your MSP means taking very concrete measures: building employee cybersecurity training into your onboarding process, emphasizing cybersecurity in your marketing collateral, making sure your clients’ software and applications are being regularly updated, encouraging your technicians to report any potential security issues — even if the issue might be a false alarm. In short, adopting a culture-first mentality about cybersecurity means taking action on all fronts, so that your staff and your clients’ businesses can all get on the same page. A unified front is the end goal, because all it takes is one weak link for something bad to happen.

Tip #2 – Get Smart about P#ssw0rds!

Let’s talk about passwords. We all use them for both personal and professional platforms. They’re central to our lives. Our crucial data rests on their strength. And yet, bad passwords remain a rampant issue and an easy point of ingress for threat actors.

You might know good password hygiene, but do your clients? What about their end-users? A survey from 2019 found that nearly a quarter of Americans have used “Password,” “Qwerty,” “123456,” or something similarly obvious for a password. The bottom line is that people systematically underestimate how easy it is for hackers to guess weak passwords.

Your MSP can help clients shed this attitude for good, by not only conveying the dangers of weak passwords, but also, by offering solutions such as Password Managers, training, and educational content. One good idea is to provide a sequence of onboarding emails and include one devoted to password hygiene. After all, strengthening your clients’ cybersecurity posture is something to do immediately and proactively, not after disaster has already struck.

Tip #3 – Implement Multi-Factor Authentication

Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is a shining example of layered security in action. Instead of following the old cybersecurity methodology, and treating “the network” as a trusted space enclosed by a fixed perimeter, MFA employs a “zero trust” approach to cybersecurity by requiring that all users provide, in addition to their log-in credentials, a second piece of identity-verifying evidence before gaining access to an application or service.

When your organization is equipped with MFA, threat actors can’t infiltrate your systems simply by illicitly obtaining log-in credentials through phishing and other means. This raises the difficulty level for hackers exponentially, and although MFA doesn’t offer 100% protection for your MSP and its clients (no cybersecurity tool does!), it does greatly mitigate the risks of a social engineering attack.

Here at The 20, we believe strongly in MFA, because we understand that employee training can only go so far. At the end of the day, you want an additional layer of security to keep threat actors out. Our tool of choice for MFA is ID 20/20, an authentication solution that makes identity verification fast, easy, and secure. Learn how it works here!

Tip #4 – Come Together as a Community

This last one is less a tip and more a rallying cry. The cybercriminal of today is not an isolated actor, cooped up in a basement and carrying out attacks for personal reasons. On the contrary, today’s threat actors operate within highly sophisticated and politically motivated organizational structures. Hackers work in groups (e.g., DarkSide and REvil), and their coordinated attacks are strategic components of broader campaigns to undermine national infrastructure and social wellbeing.

Standing up to these opportunistic and highly organized criminals requires that we adopt an equally — no, a more robust and coordinated cyberdefense strategy. There is indeed strength in numbers, and if the last few years have taught us what hackers are capable of when they have institutional resources at their disposal, let the next few years be a lesson on how strong America’s businesses and people are — especially when we put our differences aside and commit to taking down a common foe.

Right now, we don’t need heroes to fend off cybercriminals; we need each other. Your MSP can set a tone of cooperation and collaboration by working closely with clients to enhance their security posture, and by providing the IT community at large with thought leadership and actionable content.

Working together to kick a** and help businesses sustain growth and profitability . . . Now that is an idea The 20 can get behind!

Meet Wynn of In-Touch Computer Services!

Tell us a little about your MSP…

50% of our business is in Georgia and 50% is in Florida.  I started In-Touch Computer Services in 1992 in Rome,Georgia. I’m now based out of Atlanta,  just inside the perimeter and my team is scattered mostly across North Georgia and North Florida.  We serve clients as far north as Manhattan in New York and as far south as Pompano Beach in Florida (nearly Miami).  Over the years we’ve done 3 acquisitions to grow our business.

How long have you been a member of The 20?

Early 2021

Why did your MSP originally look to partner with The 20?

We wanted to standardize our offering a little more and focus our technical team on the Tier 3-4 work.  

Tell us about the biggest change in your business since joining The 20.

We just finished moving all of our agents to The 20 at the end of September, so we haven’t really gotten settled in yet.  The biggest change has been learning all the new tools, BMS, VSA, etc.  We had been on Connectwise since 2005 and Continuum (Zenith) since 2006.

What do you like most about being a member of The 20?

We like the people the most, which is #1 in business.

What do you think is the most important quality necessary for success?

Find something you love to do that serves others, and do it.  If your goal is only to finish work and retire, your work will not amount to much.

What are your biggest business challenges?

As CEO, my biggest job is BALANCE.  It’s my job to make sure my team is happy and challenged, make sure my clients are happy and taken care of, and the investment in the business continues to make sense from a financial standpoint.  When that balance is off ,  I can feel it.

What are your areas of focus for 2022?

For 2021, it has been to get settled into The 20, learn the tools and streamline the operations.  So, for 2022 the focus will be to grow with a new level of efficiency and service.

What advice would you share with an MSP looking to scale their business?

Number 1: Learn to DELEGATE to others.  Others have strengths and preferences that you don’t have.  Allow them to use those strengths.  I’ve been very fortunate to have great people that have been with me for many years.  Early on, I realized that Marsha loves the tedious tasks that drive me crazy – for 26 years she’s been happy and I’ve been happy.  As we’ve grown, we’ve continued to find others whose strengths and preferences make us a better team.  Also, find ways to delegate to other businesses – like The 20.

Number 2: Have FAITH in your people.  If you feel you can’t trust someone, let them go.  You must be able to share a mutual trust so the BS of life doesn’t interfere with your ability to take care of each other and the customer.

What book are you currently reading?

Along with my Vistage business group, I’m reading Brene Brown’s book: Dare to Lead.  (I also read the Wall Street Journal every day to keep my perspective global and not just local).

Favorite blogs/podcasts

Interested in becoming a member like In-Touch Computers? Click here for more information!

By Crystal McFerran, CMO | The 20 

Email marketing can feel dated on the surface to people outside of marketing, but it’s still one of the most important tricks of the trade to turn leads into real contracts. In modern marketing, social media gets you an audience, but email gets you a deal. It’s cheap, easy, and scalable. This trend is especially telling in B2B (business to business) ventures like MSPs.

An email list gives you access to potential leads who are interested in you for some reason. This doesn’t guarantee a sales call, but it does increase your odds. You can spend less on marketing for better results statistically.

The move from social media marketing or similar to an email list is also a way to own your audience rather than rent it from a platform. When you’re on Facebook or similar, you’re getting attention based on what makes the platform money. There are also more people with casual interests passing by who have no intention of ever buying anything.

Once someone has bought in a little, they’re at least more likely to buy in more based on the Diderot Effect. If you get them to do a favor, you can most likely get them to do more down the line per the Benjamin Franklin Effect. Combine these techniques the right way and you can ask for an email to ask for a buy in.

Owning Email

You’re asking readers a favor to get their email. What are you giving them in return for said favor? Most email lists have some trade-off, the company gets an avenue of contact, the person volunteering their email address usually gets something. This can be a white-paper, an ebook, or similar. What you use to entice may vary, but you still get some form of buy-in. As an MSP, this can range from data about specific technical aspects to case studies and other productive advice.

When you market on social media, you’re basically renting your audience. Getting their email or some other form of contact gives you a direct avenue. You’re no longer lost in the sea of businesses and chatter on social media, but you now own a direct link to potential prospects. You’ll still get fake emails and people who just don’t care, but dollar for dollar you get much more (as we’ll explore). You now have a path to own first-party data.

Taking ownership also helps pull potential prospects into your marketing funnel. Email in B2B is a direct avenue into a business inbox which is monitored more closely than many personal inboxes. You also have someone who has wanted something from you (more often than not) so they’re probably willing to listen if it directly benefits them somehow. This gives opportunity to perform drip marketing.

The Value of Email in B2B Marketing

B2B marketing involves much less impulse buying ; you’re doing something to be involved in their business. A B2B sale isn’t a transaction, it’s an investment after forming a sales cadence.

Email provides an easy avenue in which can help you get more touches to get more conversions. It takes a lot of energy and effort to shift services, but it can be necessary. A no in sales isn’t always a no, it’s more a no, not right now. B2B sales aren’t the same as they used to be.

Your marketing process feeds your sales process. You can’t sell without leads, and you can’t generate leads (at scale) without marketing. The problem with lead generation is that some leads are just worth more.

When someone signs up with their email, you have a contact method, and you have some level of interest. It currently makes up 23.11% of MSP marketing methods for the average MSP, but it becomes essential to scale. With the right tracking methods and data, you can sift leads to find which are worth spending the most on for pennies on the dollar compared to most other active digital marketing methods. You won’t win every sale, but you will greatly reduce the waste of cold calling and blind outreach. They already wanted something, now show them what you have that’s more of an ask.

How to Drip Market

Drip marketing is the same for B2C (Business to Consumer) and B2B; the difference is the scope. B2C can rely on more simple techniques for long-term leads, but B2B requires a bit more. You aren’t buying an individual’s approval, you’re trying to sell a group on your value. For an MSP, this is even more involved since you need your client to trust you with the most important parts of their business.

Drip marketing is basically the practice of contacting a potential lead or prospect multiple times to get them interested. Each email contains something to keep their interest and push them deeper into your funnel. A campaign can start with a problem, progress to solutions, progress through implementation, then progress through the problems with said implementation, and then finally progresses towards the harder sales pitch of why you avoid said process. You guide them through your reasoning towards why your solution has already solved the problem. This is just one example of many ideas which can make for a simple template for a drip marketing campaign.

Each touch can whittle away at doubts and even help weed out incompatible leads. A lead you can sell, but which you won’t retain past the onboarding is worth less than no lead at all. Drip marketing is all about having multiple touches to keep your audience engaged with your brand and your campaign. Sell them on your expertise and your solution while weeding out bad fits.

Applying Email Marketing

Email marketing is one of the lowest cost ways to get more direct access to clients. Email allows you to send to many clients with a single email. Cold calling requires someone calling and the time to talk (as well as luck getting a hold of someone). Traditional ads require money and the risk of misclicks from phone and tablet users.

Email marketing can be near free with Mailchimp and similar, or you can leverage something like Hubspot. We use Hubspot for the features it offers over similar platforms, but the best platform is one which works with you. That said, Hubspot is near standard in many marketing efforts because of the power its CRM offers. Sign up with Hubspot to get the most out of your marketing process and see why we’re an affiliate.

Do you have a newsletter or some kind of blog with information that your customers or potential customers can benefit from? How do you get it to them? You can post it on social media, or you can ask for their emails, pull them in, and provide them with a more direct link. The more they interact with your platform, the better the fit they probably are.

Write what can help your customers understand technology, understand the industry, or understand the news about what you provide. What is PrintNightmare? How does it apply to their business and what would you do about it as their IT specialist?

As an MSP, you should be leading from a technical angle. What do you do for your client and how can you show them what you could do? Email marketing is about providing value and about showing what value your business provides. Some will bite, others won’t, but you get better quality leads and easier sales when done right.

How are you getting leads and where is email in your process? Does email help you or do you get lost making it into something which generates leads? Email is the lowest risk, easiest way to jump from passive marketing to active marketing. All your MSP needs to do is make the jump and target your clients.

Learn how we do marketing here at The 20 and how you can benefit from our marketing program by reaching out here.

What is PSA?

Introduction: Defining PSA

Professional Services Automation (PSA) refers to the use of IT by businesses in the professional services industry to automate routine processes and perform data-driven workflow management. The purpose of PSA is to allow service-oriented businesses to operate more efficiently and profitably. PSA helps businesses achieve these aims in a variety of ways, including:

• Service Delivery Optimization
• Intelligent Resource Allocation
• Automation of Administrative Tasks
• Task Tracking for Improved Contract Management and Customer Experience (CX)
• Data-Driven Business Insights

This article provides an overview of PSA’s core features as well as some of the more advanced facilities that modern PSA software boasts. We will be focusing on PSA’s utility for Managed Service Provider (MSP) businesses.

Why PSA is Important for Your MSP

An important tool for any kind of IT provider, PSA is especially crucial for MSPs. The modern MSP has many moving parts, and in today’s competitive IT industry, to be successful as an MSP you must develop systematic and scalable approaches to service delivery. Without such approaches, a growing MSP will have trouble staying organized and, in turn, making customers happy.

PSA is a pivotal component of a mature MSP’s operations as it furnishes MSPs with a single data set, or single source of truth (SSOT), which offers a “bird’s-eye view” of operations, and in turn, allows for holistic optimization of key business processes. If you want your business to be efficient and scalable, the place to start is with your PSA.

A good PSA will connect your front and back office, and refine workflows so that your entire MSP functions as a cohesive unit. If your employees are the “backbone” of your business, your PSA is the “nervous system,” responsible for maintaining the flow of business-critical information throughout your entire company.

The question is not whether MSPs need a robust PSA system, but what kind. The right PSA solution can elevate your MSP by bringing increased efficiency and business intelligence (BI) to practically every area of your operations.

Let’s take a closer look at the key features of good PSA software and how these features contribute to an MSP’s overall health as a business.

Key Features of PSA Software

Modern PSA software has evolved far beyond the management of help desk functions. The right PSA solution doesn’t just improve the way your technicians carry out projects and handle tickets, it also enhances the strategic side of your organization by yielding insights into what is — and isn’t — maximizing overall profitability. Adding an effective PSA tool to your MSP is almost like hiring another member of management, in that it bolsters your company’s capacity to plan for the future and adapt to changing circumstances in real-time.

PSA benefits service businesses in many ways. It can be helpful and clarifying to sort these benefits into three categories:

1. Client-Facing
2. Internal Operations
3. Business Strategy

Let’s go over each of these categories in turn.

Client-Facing

An MSP is a service business first, and an IT business second. What does this mean? It means that successful, industry-leading MSPs got to where they are by thinking about the customer. It is through the lens of customer satisfaction that you need to analyze your delivery service. PSA gives you that lens.

PSA impacts client-facing activities most directly through the help desk, where automation can enhance the service delivery capacities of your team of technicians by taking routine tasks off of their plate.

PSA optimizes your MSP’s service delivery at four levels: basic automation, resource allocation, information management, and strategic oversight.

Basic Automation

Basic automation refers to PSA’s capacity to take care of simple business tasks without manual intervention. It represents one of the core purposes of PSA, and it is arguably PSA’s single-most important feature.

With PSA software, your MSP can draw on automation to clear space in your technicians’ schedules for higher-priority, higher-value projects. This alone can lift the quality of your service delivery by significant and quantifiable amounts.

Resource Allocation

The second way PSA improves your MSP’s service delivery is by allocating resources in accordance with real-time demands. In plain English, the right software enables your MSP to put the right techs on the right jobs at the right time.

Certain software allows managers to split, combine, and elevate tickets based on performance metrics that provide real-time access to technicians’ progress. Too many techs on a ticket? Not enough? The wrong techs? Let PSA answer these questions for you, so you can focus on building your business.

Information Management

A third way that PSA enhances customer-facing operations is by giving MSPs a centralized location for customer data. PSA solutions with a built-in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool allow you to maintain account profiles on all of your clients as well as detailed records of customer interactions. This repository of information, organized by your PSA tool, allows you and your managers to monitor the health of your client relationships.

PSA’s usefulness as an information management tool extends to customer experience (CX); in addition to providing your team with customer information, PSA gives your customers real-time access to the status of their service requests. Customers who know what’s going on are happier — as well as less likely to call into the help desk and tie up technicians with questions and concerns.

Strategic Oversight

An MSP’s customer-facing activities reflect its internal relationships — the health of its teams. Excellent service delivery begins with transparency; managers need to have a clear view of ticketing progress — or lack thereof! Ensuring that customers’ expectations are being met and contracts honored requires good data.

This brings us to the fourth way in which PSA optimizes service delivery: good PSA software scrapes together all the data you and your project managers need to make informed decisions and puts it all in one convenient dashboard. Managers who know what their teams are doing — and teams that know they are being held accountable — will do their jobs better. It’s that simple.

To summarize, a good PSA tool allows you to inject efficiency into practically every facet of your support desk. With the right PSA solution, your MSP can allocate resources more intelligently to meet real-time capacity limitations and customer demands, view customer information through a single pane of glass to maintain healthy client relationships, and achieve better service delivery through automation and a culture of transparency and accountability.

Internal Operations

Administrative tasks can eat up a lot of time and resources when they’re not performed efficiently. PSA allows growing businesses to automate large portions of admin work, and in turn, achieve much greater operational efficiency. Billing and financial activities in particular become much easier with the right software solutions.

Timesheets might be mundane, but they’re important. You want to be paid for the work you do in a timely fashion, with minimal disputes and hassles. With PSA, you can streamline the entire process of time tracking. Instead of wasting hours each week puzzling out billable activities, you can let PSA capture all of your billable items and feed them into a centralized location — a dashboard that provides you with a snapshot of your organization’s financial activities. Contracts, client revenue, invoicing deadlines — when everything is in one place, you can spend less time figuring out what you need to do, and more time doing it.

Certain PSA tools also offer integration with popular accounting software. When your PSA and accounting software are linked by automation, financial records are far less likely to be lost and your business is far less likely to overlook billable activities.

Like many improvements that PSA brings, the benefits of enlisting automation for billing show up most clearly at the level of customer support. When your financial processes are smooth and transparent, backed up by clear resource logging and time tracking, you will experience fewer disputes with clients over billing. This is of course good for its own sake, but also, it means more time to grow your business; the less time you’re arguing with clients, the more time you can devote to attracting new ones.

Business Strategy

PSA has evolved from an automation tool into a sophisticated engine for analytics and business strategy. Modern PSA software not only streamlines the operations of service-oriented businesses, but assists with strategic activities such as forecasting, bidding, and profitability analysis.

PSA can’t make big business decisions for you, but it can focus your priorities, narrow down your options, and give you the data you need to make rational choices about the direction you take your company.

We have already discussed how PSA optimizes help desk activities by allocating resources in real time — by putting the right techs on the right jobs. This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the BI that gets built into modern PSA software.

The right PSA tool can allow your MSP to engage in more data-driven, intelligent bidding, and some PSA software can help client managers identify potential business opportunities or upsells with existing clients.

PSA can also give you a precise idea of what your company’s capacity will be multiple months into the future, which allows for more strategic planning. Human beings are highly fallible when it comes to estimating how much can be accomplished in a given timeframe. PSA allows MSPs and other service businesses to take on the right amount of work — neither too much, nor too little — which translates to superior service delivery and greater customer satisfaction.

This is just an introduction to some of the ways in which PSA can yield global insights into your company’s operations, but it should be clear that PSA is more than automation; it’s a suite of tools and features that collectively allow for greater strategic insights and business agility.

How to Choose the Right PSA Tool for Your Business

MSPs need a PSA solution to compete in today’s market, but not all solutions are created equal. Picking the right tool for your MSP is critical, and it’s important that you do your research. Whether you’re adding PSA for the first time, or considering a transition from one tool to another, asking these three questions can help you make the right choice for your business.

Does the PSA tool you’re considering offer useful integrations?

As important as your PSA tool is to your business, it’s one of many tools, and it’s vital to your MSP’s success that your various technology solutions are all knitted together tightly.

At the absolute least, you want a PSA solution that integrates with your Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) tool. When PSA and RMM are able to “talk to” each other, your MSP will function much more smoothly.

Before selecting a PSA tool, consider the integrations it offers. Modern PSA software can integrate with accounting and billing tools, CRM software, documentation platforms, and more. And, when assessing the integrative capacities of a particular tool, keep your business’s specific needs firmly in mind; instead of buying more for a flashy tool with integrations you don’t need, opt for a simpler tool that will easily harmonize with your MSP’s IT environment.

Does the PSA tool you’re considering serve your MSP’s specific needs?

Your MSP is unique, and it’s important to remember that the PSA that’s best for your MSP is the one that best helps you run your business the way you want.

Instead of getting distracted by the ‘bells and whistles’ that a particular PSA solution comes with, start with the question: What do I want most out of a PSA tool? When your own priorities are clear, it’s much easier to assess the relative merits of different solutions.

Is it easy to use?

When shopping around for a new PSA tool for your business, don’t lose sight of one simple truth: A PSA tool is only as useful as it is easy-to-use. It doesn’t matter how great a solution sounds ‘in theory’ if your employees don’t end up embracing it and using it consistently.

This means it’s important, when comparing different PSA tools, to take different solutions for ‘test drives.’ You can’t get a feel for a particular tool’s interface — how easy it is to use — until you actually use it. A lot of PSA tools on today’s market offer free trials, so take advantage!

Kaseya BMS: A PSA Tool Built for MSPs

MSPs that struggle with growth are often bogged down by operational inefficiencies. These inefficiencies generally stem from inadequate integrations between departments, functions, and people. Information gets lost and workflows interrupted when your MSP doesn’t function smoothly as a whole.

Kaseya Business Management Solution (BMS) is a PSA platform specifically designed to help MSPs achieve operational harmony without a large front-end investment. Its scalable, cloud-based architecture allows growing MSPs to implement cost-effective solutions for all of their core functions. BMS includes everything you want from modern PSA software, at about one third the price of competing solutions. Learn more!

Choosing the right PSA tool for your MSP is a big decision. The 20 is a group of MSPs who work together to conquer the ‘business side’ of IT. With The 20 at your back, you can implement big changes at your MSP with a community of experts to guide you through the transition. Get in touch with us today to learn how we can help.

Meet Andrew Sellers, Senior Tier 2 Support Desk Technician!

Andrew Sellers quickly became a tremendous asset to the entire team at The 20. Read below to find out more about Andrew.

What do you do here at The 20?

Senior Tier 2 Support Desk Technician

Describe The 20 in three words…

Accountable. Driven. Excellence.

As a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up? 

A doctor.

What’s the most challenging thing about your job? 

Communications that are inclusive for everyone and easy for everyone to understand

What do you consider your greatest achievement? 

Paying off my house and being debt free and not needing to work

What do you think is the most important quality necessary for success? 

Winning Together. It starts with the tickets having all the needed questions answered (Who, What, When, Why, How, and Where). Then putting that information together to formulate a hypothesis that testing will lead to a solution. Success in this requires the entire team.

What do you like most about The 20? 

My fellow coworkers bring everything to the table and we really come together as a team.

What do you like to do in your spare time? / What are your hobbies? 

Rock Climbing, Hiking, Disc Golf, Board Games, Magic The Gathering, and woodworking.

Where are you going on your next vacation?

 Not sure. Scotland, or a beach. Not sure which is coming first.

What’s your top life hack?

Interested in working with Andrew at The 20? We’re hiring! Check out our Careers page for more info.

VISION ’21 Keynote Speaker Spotlight

Nick Vujicic and the Unbelievable Power of Choice

Life is unpredictable and full of curve balls. We booked Maye Musk as our keynote speaker for VISION ’21, but due to unforeseen circumstances, she was unable to make it to the event. We needed a replacement, and we needed one FAST …

So we put our heads together, and landed a remarkable man by the name of Nick Vujicic. And ‘remarkable’ is an understatement; since Nick delivered his powerful keynote on Thursday of last week, we’ve been flooded with positive feedback — people can’t stop talking about the profound impact Nick had on them. There’s no doubt in our minds that lives were changed.

We want to highlight Nick’s message and share his story with our community of MSPs, business owners, IT pros, and everyone else who reads our blog. The more people that hear about Nick’s approach to living a happy, successful, and fulfilling life, the better!

Who is Nick Vujicic?

Nick Vujicic was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1982. His parents were shocked to discover that their newborn son lacked both arms and legs. Nick was born with an extremely rare disorder called tetra-amelia syndrome, which is characterized by the absence of limbs. His mom and dad knew life wouldn’t be easy for their son, and this scared them, as it would any parents.

And life wasn’t easy for young Nick. Kids can be cruel, and at school, Nick got called “freak” and “alien.” He did his best to fit in, refusing to let his condition keep him on the sidelines. He swam, he skateboarded, he made friends. But growing up is hard for anyone, and with the unique challenges that Nick faced, he eventually “hit a wall.” As he shares in his book, Life Without Limits: Inspiration for a Ridiculously Good Life, “I was depressed, overwhelmed with negative thoughts, and didn’t see any point in my life.” Things got so bad he thought about suicide.

How did he get from there to where he is now? How did the depressed adolescent become the loving husband and father of four, the successful entrepreneur, the life-changing motivational speaker?

He discovered the power of choice. Our lives are our own to shape. As Nick himself puts it, “We can choose to dwell on disappointments and shortcomings … Or when faced with hard times and hurtful people, we can choose to learn from the experience and move forward, taking responsibility for our own happiness.”

At VISION ’21, we were lucky enough to hear Nick unpack his worldview in detail. He gave us six points to live by — six principles we can all follow to take control of our lives and make the world a better place …

Six Points to Live By: Nick Vujicic’s Secrets for Success and Fulfillment

Point #1: Process Your Emotions

At VISION ’21, Nick reminded all of us that it’s OK to feel bad sometimes. In fact, feeling bad can be a good thing, as there are insights, power, and wisdom that can be ‘extracted’ from our darker moods. Take anger, for instance. If we’re not careful, anger can make us yell at people, act aggressively, etc. But if we are mindful, we can choose to leverage our anger for good. Anger can make us braver and more honest in the workplace, for instance. So don’t feel bad about feeling bad, but commit to using your negative emotions to bring about positive changes.

Point#2: Have an “Attitude of Gratitude”

Gratitude is one of the most powerful emotions there is, because it not only lets us appreciate what’s good in our lives, it also prevents us from sinking too low during difficult times. If you can embrace the following idea, you’ll experience immeasurably more joy in your life: Gratitude is not a reaction, but an action. Grateful people aren’t those who have more good things happen to them; grateful people are those who’ve made a choice — or many choices — to focus on what’s good, even in situations where the ‘good’ is a needle in a haystack of bad. You can start cultivating your own gratitude today — this very moment! If the ‘big things’ in your life aren’t going well, start with the small things. You can breathe. You’re alive. You have the ability to make choices. That right there is enough to build the foundation for your attitude of gratitude.

Point #3: Reset Your Goals

Resetting goals can mean adopting new ones. But ‘resetting goals’ has a deeper, subtler meaning that Nick Vujicic clarified at VISION ’21: Resetting your goals can mean reassessing how you’re going about pursuing what you want to achieve. Think about whether your current habits are conducive to getting where you want to go in business and in life. If they’re not, it’s time to build some new habits!

During his keynote, Nick described a habit as a “forceful decision that doesn’t feel good at the beginning.” This reminds us of something vitally important about chasing goals: sometimes you need to change yourself before you can accomplish what you most desire, and doing that requires that you go through some discomfort. Change is hard, but stay strong, because it’s like Nick said at VISION: “You never just go through things. You grow through things.”

Point #4: Dream BIG!

Don’t let “dreaming” be something you only do at night when you’re fast asleep in your bed. Nick recommends setting aside at least half an hour each week for dreaming. Step away from your day-to-day responsibilities and let your biggest, boldest hopes come to the surface. Take your own dreams seriously. This means making concrete plans. Break your dream(s) down into smaller tasks, and get STARTED. If you want to write a book, commit to writing a page a week. If you don’t prioritize your dreams and manage your time accordingly, you’ll spend your whole life wondering what you could’ve done.

Point #5: Obstacles = Opportunities

In Life Without Limits, Nick writes, “I’m officially disabled, but I’m truly enabled because of my lack of limbs.” He means it, too. It was his condition that drove him to become a motivational speaker and coach, and those decisions have allowed him to touch the hearts and minds of millions.

Nick’s success didn’t come overnight, and as he reminded us at VISION ’21, he failed many, many times. In fact, when he first started out and was making cold calls to book speaking gigs, he was told “No” so many times, when he finally did get a “Yes,” he almost didn’t register the response! Bottom line, failing doesn’t make you a failure; in fact, winners fail more than anyone else because winners get out there and TRY. Business owners take heed! You will fail, and it probably won’t feel good, but remember — there is value to be found in negative emotions. So let “failure be your classroom”!

Point #6: When You Don’t Get a Miracle, BE a Miracle!

Nick shared a moving story at VISION ’21 about meeting a boy who was also born without limbs. As luck would have it, Nick’s own mom and dad were there, too. The two families had lots to discuss! Now, although Nick and his parents never had the good fortune to meet with a family in their circumstances during Nick’s upbringing, they were more than happy to be that family for this young boy and his parents.

The lesson is simple: instead of always focusing on what the world is giving (or not giving) you, turn your attention and energy to what you can give the world. And yes, this applies to entrepreneurs, too. It applies especially well, in fact! Successful businesses identify customer needs and problems and offer solutions that make people’s lives easier, better, etc. Stop thinking about your profits all the time, and start thinking about your service. If you can do that — if you can truly inhabit the mindset of a giver — you’ll be amazed by how everything else falls into place.

A Final Thought

Curve balls happen. But sometimes, it’s for the best. Sometimes, the person you found in a time crunch — the person no one in the audience was expecting to see up on stage — faces the curve ball, takes a swing, and knocks it out the park.

Do you know what will happen in the coming year? Do you know how much your business will grow? How many new clients you’ll take on? You don’t. But you do know this much: you have the power to choose action over fear, hope over despair, and compassion over resentment. If you embrace that power, there’s no limit to what you can achieve.

The 20 Honors Top Managed Service Providers and Vendors at VISION 2021

Full press release here

 The 20, leading MSP consortium, honored top managed services providers and vendors with VISION 2021 awards. Presented at its eighth annual VISION conference, these awards recognized managed service providers and vendors for their outstanding achievements over the past year. 

“Year after year, our community of MSPs continues to blow us away with their dedication to innovation, growth, and excellence. It’s an honor to recognize their commitment to The 20’s model, and showcase their continued performance and success,” said Tim Conkle, CEO of The 20. 

“It is also a tremendous privilege to honor the vendors propelling the growth of our MSP members, and give them the recognition they absolutely deserve,” added Conkle. 

The 20’s VISION 2021 Awards include:
 

• MSP of the Year – Red Box Business Solutions
• MSP Business Growth – E2 IT Consulting 
• Most Engaged MSP – Peterson Technology Group & Byte-Werx
• Support Desk Favorite – Wolfguard IT
• Ambassador of the Year – Gary Blawat of INGRAIN IT
• Best Revenue Booster –  Egnyte
• Most Disruptive Solution – Kaseya
• Most Helpful Vendor –  Nerdio
• Product of the Year – BLOKWORX 
• Partner of the Year – BLOKWORX 

The VISION 2021 Conference featured best-in-class thought leadership, actionable content sessions, channel trends, interactive peer panels, and  peer networking – all focused on growing your IT services business. Keynote speaker, Nick Vujicic, a world-renowned speaker, New York Times best-selling author, coach and entrepreneur, shared his life obstacles and how to turn them into opportunities. Hailed as the most important MSP event of the year, VISION brought together top MSPs and IT service providers for three impactful days of speakers, sessions, and networking focused on business best practices, thought leadership, and growth.