The 20 is excited to introduce Taking Over in 2022: Tips and Trends for Managed Service Providers, a free guide for growth-minded MSPs with big plans for the future.
Over the past few years, a host of businesses turned to MSPs for help with rapid digital transformations. This sudden demand for managed IT services allowed MSPs of all sizes to maintain or even increase revenue in 2021.
But what can MSPs expect in 2022 and beyond?
Introducing Taking Over in 2022
MSPs are at a critical juncture. Although the MSP market is predicted to continue growing over the next several years, competition is also on the rise, and a widespread consolidation and culling of MSPs is imminent.
Is your MSP ready for what’s coming? Having the right gameplan can help your MSP — whatever its size — ride the wave of growth to the very top of the industry.
Here at The 20, we’re all about giving MSPs the tools and resources they need to succeed. That’s why we created Taking Over in 2022 — to help your MSP put together a powerful growth plan and take on the future with confidence.
This FREE GUIDE gives you answers to vital questions such as …
What trends are currently shaping the MSP space?
What does ‘prioritizing cybersecurity’ actually look like in 2022?
Remote work is here to stay. How should your MSP be approaching the task of helping companies manage their remote workforce?
What do most smaller MSPs lack when it comes to capitalizing on cloud migrations?
Competition is stiffer than ever before in the MSP space — what should smaller MSPs be focusing on to avoid getting left behind in the next several years?
Taking Over in 2022 is the definitive guide for ‘future-proofing’ your MSP business. Fill out one simple form and get your free download today!
Women in Technology
Looking Back, Looking Around, and Looking Ahead
Why This Isn’t Another Listicle
As March — and Women’s History Month — comes to a close, we want to look back at the history of women in tech. We’re not going to talk about individual women — the ‘Top Ten Women in IT History’ — so if you’re looking for a listicle, sorry to disappoint. It’s not that there aren’t plenty of brilliant and influential women in the history of IT, because there are! Here’s a good list of some. Here’s another.
No, the reason we’re not listing individual women is because we don’t want to reinforce a particular way of thinking about women in technology. The role that women have played in IT is much larger than people tend to imagine. These days, it’s easy to think that the history of women in technology is the history of the occasional genius or trailblazer who was able to overcome gender bias and make an impact in a male-dominated field.
But the truth is far more interesting and complicated.
So we’re not going to list individuals. We’re going to look at real history of women in tech, focusing on the emergence of the computing industry in the US. It might surprise you.
The Real History of Women in Tech: Where We’re Coming From
Let’s be honest — the IT world has not, traditionally, been considered a bastion of gender equality. In fact, gender bias has been so prevalent in tech, many people just assume that the computing industry has always been male-dominated, and that the significant contributions women are making in tech today are unprecedented — a testament to ‘how far we’ve come.’
But you know what they say about assumptions …
The truth is, women got the IT industry off the ground in the United States — and did so for the good of the nation. During World War II, with men off to war, it fell to women to learn how to operate the room-sized supercomputers that the U.S. used to crack codes, make ballistic calculations, and work out military logistics — important jobs, to say the least. What few people realize is that during the war and up through the mid-sixties, women made up the majority of the tech workforce.
Computing was, for multiple decades, work done by women. But that was the problem; in society’s eyes, it was women’s work in a derogatory sense of those words. The operation of computers was, prior to the 70s, viewed as unskilled labor, and the women who performed this work were not given adequate respect and recognition for their efforts. Case in point: six women programmed the first electronic computer — the ENIAC — in 1946, but they weren’t even invited to the dinner celebrating the machine’s unveiling and successful demonstration!
What happened next should hardly come as a surprise. To quote Faruk Ateş’ concise summary of the sea change that occurred in the computing industry, “Women invented the field. Then men pushed them out of it.”
By the 1970s, government and industry were starting to catch on to just how powerful the computing revolution was. In her illuminating book, Programmed Inequality, tech historian Mar Hicks discusses how men in power, once they realized that computers were the way of the future, “weren’t going to put women workers – seen as low level drones – in charge of computers.” Maria Aspan also writes about this shift in how computer work was conceptualized: “The advent of the personal computer, paired with the emergence of “geek” culture in the late 1970s, starts to shift perceptions, propagating prejudices that females aren’t good at math and science.”
In short, once the industry that women built became undeniably lucrative, men decided that computers weren’t ‘women’s work’ after all. What a convenient shift in thinking …
So, how should this history lesson inflect our perspective on the present day? Well, for one thing, we shouldn’t perpetuate the narrative that women’s current presence in tech is the start of something great. Because it’s not. It’s the continuation — after an unfortunate interruption — of a rich legacy.
But where do we find ourselves at this juncture in history? Are women truly being empowered to make a triumphant return to the IT world?
How We’re Doing
Like any project that seeks to erase prejudice and systemic discrimination, the pursuit of gender equality in IT is important from a purely ethical perspective: women deserve to be treated equally, and that means whichever field they wish to enter.
But in addition to the glaring moral necessity of eradicating sexism from the tech world, there’s the fact that the entire industry benefits from greater inclusivity and diversity. Consider these research-backed findings:
Companies in the top quartile for gender or racial and ethnic diversity are more likely to achieve financial returns that exceed their industry’s median
Firms with at least 30% female leadership enjoy a 15% increase in profitability over similar firms with no female leaders
Women’s voices matter — along with minority voices, LGBTQ voices, and the numerous other voices that make up the human choir — and when they’re left out, we all suffer.
Tracey Welson-Rossman, founder of TechGirlz, sums things up nicely: “Bringing more women into the technology workforce produces a more competitive business environment that can fire on all cylinders and at full capacity.” We cannot emphasize this enough: businesses and industries that respect and welcome women — along with racial minorities and members of the LGBTQ community — benefit from the addition of different voices and perspectives. It’s not that including women won’t hurt technology; it will accelerate its evolution and take it to new heights.
So how are we doing on that front? Statistics paint a complicated picture:
The percentage of women in senior IT leadership positions increased from 21% in 2018 to 24% in 2019 (IDC)
Women make up 28.8% of the tech workforce, up from 25.9% in 2018 and 26.2% in 2019 (AnitaB.org)
74% of young girls express interest in a STEM field (Girls Who Code)
These numbers, though from reflecting gender equality in tech, are somewhat heartening. However, other statistics suggest that there’s work to be done — and lots of it:
In the mid-1980s, 37% of computer science majors were women, but now it’s only 18% (ComputerScience.org)
Women working in computer and mathematical occupations earn 82 cents for every dollar made by men (Narrow the Gap)
Code written by women was accepted 4% more often than code written by men, but only when the programmer’s gender wasn’t disclosed (GitHub)
Women-operated VC-backed tech startups generate annual revenues 12% higher than male-operated ones, yet women-led companies received only 2.8% of total capital invested in 2019
To be sure, women are making huge strides in tech, and we are seeing more and more women in prominent leadership roles. But these victories shouldn’t distract us from statistics such as the above, nor the reality to which they point. While certain societal obstacles to women’s involvement in IT have diminished, participation continues to lag and gender biases persist. Things are moving in the right direction, but too slowly, which is why we want to conclude this blog post with suggestions that we can all take to heart in our collective effort to break the bias!
How We Can Do Better
We are at a moment in history where social justice is on everyone’s mind. If we can harness the momentum that the past decade has generated, and keep pushing for change, we can, in this lifetime, see a truly equitable society start to emerge — one in which people are free to be who they are and pursue what they love. But what are some specific ways in which we can break the bias in the technology community?
Mentorship
The power of mentorship is hard to overestimate. Having even just one person in your professional life who has your best interests at heart, and who’s willing to invest time and resources in your growth, can make a tremendous difference to your future success. This holds true of all people, but research suggests that women pursuing careers in tech are in particular need of more mentorship; one survey found that 40% of women consider a “lack of mentorship” to be one of the biggest obstacles to their equal representation in the workplace.
If you’re a woman looking to break into tech or advance your existing IT career, seek mentorship. And if you’re in a position to mentor a female colleague or associate, reach out and see if your guidance would be welcome.
Break Bad Habits
Overt displays of workplace sexism have diminished considerably, largely due to movements such as #MeToo, but gender bias persists in myriad ways, many of which are subtle and fly under the radar. It falls on all of us — men and women alike — to be on the lookout for sexist behaviors at the office. This means not only monitoring others’ behaviors, but your own (yes, even if you are a woman; sexist attitudes and beliefs can be internalized by women as well as men).
If you notice that there’s an issue with women getting interrupted during meetings, say something (there likely is, as research shows that women are interrupted twice as often as men!). If there’s an issue with women not getting full credit for their ideas and contributions, say something. Speaking up isn’t easy, but it’s vital. And remember, calling out sexist behaviors isn’t about shaming or punishing people, but educating them to be better. Accountability is a powerful tool, when used with good intentions and a spirit of compassion.
Show Her the Money!
We mentioned earlier how women-led tech startups attract less investment from venture capitalists than do men-led startups. This is unacceptable, as there is no evidence to suggest that companies with women at the helm are less likely to succeed. So, if you’re in a position to invest in female entrepreneurs, make a conscious effort to do so. And if you aren’t able to invest serious capital, you can show your support by being more intentional in your personal spending; buy from women-led and minority-led companies, because moral support isn’t always enough. Put your money where your beliefs are!
Nurture Early Interest in IT
We learned that 74% of girls express interest in a STEM career, although a much smaller portion go on to achieve degrees in STEM fields. How can we sustain early interest, instead of letting it fade? By nurturing it! We must, as a society, start to actively foster young girls’ and young women’s interest in technology and computing. Research shows that women who took AP computer science in high school were 10x more likely to choose computer science as a major. So let’s make sure female youth feel encouraged and empowered to explore any interest they have in IT, because active involvement in childhood and adolescence translates to participation as an adult. Here’s a list of some great programs devoted to helping female coders develop their talents and break into the tech industry.
A Rallying Call to IT Business Owners
Our readership for this blog consists largely of business owners and decision makers at IT companies. So we want to speak directly to you about the power that lies in your hands to effect social change. Your organization is like a miniature world that you’ve created. So let your ‘world’ be a microcosm of justice and equality — a place where people feel supported and lifted up, and never discriminated against or judged according to stale stereotypes that belong in the dustbin of history.
You might not be able to change society as a whole, but you can carve out your own space that exemplifies our better instincts, and prohibits our worst impulses. In the IT world, which is supposed to be all about forward thinking and reaching new heights, we can’t imagine a more fitting project.
Anyone in marketing or sales is familiar with the traditional funnel model. While who does what may have changed, the model has ultimately stayed conceptually the same. Marketing builds awareness and interest, and sales converts the leads into paying customers. The line demarcating the hand-off between marketing and sales is going to depend on the company and the clients. Your goal is to make this process as efficient as possible.
The marketing process feeds into the sales process, but the entire process can be described as creating awareness, developing interest, refining this interest into a desire and fulfilling the desire (with your product or brand). Different marketing and sales teams may further split these tasks into things like evaluation, consideration and so on.
Our principle model is built on teaching our partners to grow from break-fix into modern managed service providers. By shoring up the traditional sales funnel, we enable ourselves and our partners to let the chaff fall out early and let the grains settle where they’re easy to get at without wasting time or effort.
Once you, as a managed service provider, understand what the funnel is, you can begin to make it efficient. You’re going to lose a lot of your leads at each step, too, so don’t waste time or resources on a lead that is going nowhere. Build inertia with your prospective lead, and direct them toward your sales. Plug any leaks in your process. Your marketing team should act as a filter to prevent the whole system from getting clogged in addition to generating the initial leads.
Building Inertia
Once a lead makes it past the initial filter, build inertia with them. As Sir Isaac Newton noted, an object at rest stays at rest, and an object in motion stays in motion. Get your prospective client in motion. They know who you are, and they’re at least a little interested by the time they make it through the biggest filters, so how do you get them to sign?
Set expectations of what you’ll do and how. The more concrete, the easier the dream is to sell. Get them thinking about how you, as their service provider or vendor, will help them accomplish the goal they’re looking to reach. Don’t let them think of if you’re their vendor or provider. Instead, tell them what you’ll do for them when you are.
A little bit of inertia is going to discourage them from shopping around as seriously. They’ve already invested some hope into you being part of the process. If you set the expectations right and get them sold on your service, they’re going to get what they want, and you’ll get what you want. Push them forward, and keep them moving without pushing too hard.
Directing Movement
Getting them moving is just one part of the process. You need them to move in the right direction. If you find the client just won’t be a good fit (your service doesn’t fit them and the money isn’t there to make it fit), then let them go without burning the bridge. If a client is a good fit, push them to start making the right decisions to help both of you.
How you direct the client depends on what they want or what they’re trying to do. For example, if a company is selling luxury goods, it sells the idea of the brand rather than the item itself. The customer’s interest has already piqued, so how does it convert this interest into desire?
If another company is selling luxury watches and a client mentions camping, it sells them on that dream by directing their excitement toward that watch being a part of their life. The watch they’re looking at is both waterproof and stylish. It fits an active and sophisticated life. It sells the watch as being a reflection of them and their goals. Inertia got them in the door, and the company is now directing them to the register.
This same principle applies to services. If they’re hands-off, show them how you make it easy for them. If they want to steer, show them how you listen and let them stay involved. Your service is a reflection of their business and goals.
Preventing Leaks
Make your correspondences keep them in your space. Don’t link to a competitor’s website. Don’t use too many outbound links that don’t benefit you. These just lead to the direction getting muddled. This also factors into plugging earlier leaks in the funnel.
Make it easy for them to continue with the sales process. What happens when you go to a site and have to sign up for an account just to see a price? For most people, they just leave. All of the awareness, interest and desire get tossed out because the process wasn’t easy. It was a waste of your time and theirs.
For managed services, get them to sign something, whether it’s an NDA or a discovery agreement. This first contract solidifies the bond you’ve been building and prevents them from just grabbing the secret sauce and finding someone cheaper who can talk the talk. Very few clients shop for managed services simply because they can do them but don’t want to. They may not understand that going cheaper has its costs and risks even though the stereotypical used car salesman at your competitor promised them otherwise.
Fixing The Funnel And Moving Forward
Understand the funnel in general and how it works at your company. Get marketing to filter out the obvious bad fits to make it easier to prevent the filter from getting clogged. Build inertia, and don’t let the filter leak needlessly. You’re going to have leads miss, but when you optimize your sales process, you reduce the cost and the waste at each level.
Are there places you can build more inertia? Are there places where you’re having leads misdirected? Break down your process, and see what you can optimize. Use data and analytics to make metrics to further optimize your sales funnel. Once you get the more human side of the process down, you can focus on measuring it. There’s no point in doing analytics on something that doesn’t work.
What is The 20?
The 20 is helping managed service providers all across North America solve the puzzle of growth. But what’s the story behind The 20 — where did it come from, and where’s it going?
The 20, like so many things, started out as an idea. It didn’t come to me all at once. It came in pieces, coalescing over time into a vision I just knew I had to make a reality.
But before we get into all of that, a little bit about me and my history in the IT space…
Two Decades of Struggle
I’ve always liked trying things. I learned at a very early age that if you want something, and it’s worth the effort, you go for it. You don’t hem and haw. You don’t let fear get in the way. You get moving.
In the early 90s, I saw an opportunity to make some real money in IT — the industry was clearly on the rise, and I wanted in on the action. So, I bought an IT company in 1992 and geared up to watch it take off.
That first year, things didn’t go as well as I’d been expecting. But I didn’t lose hope. I made adjustments — tweaking what needed tweaking, changing what needed changing — and geared up for a big year two.
But year two wasn’t much better. Growth remained slow. I wasn’t getting anywhere near my goal of breaking $1 million in annual revenue. I’ll be honest — it was a tough time!
Our service wasn’t the problem. When we did get a client, I knew we’d be able to provide them with top-notch service. The problem was getting that client in the first place. The problem was getting that phone to ring.
But I’m stubborn, and I wasn’t going to throw in the towel after a couple of hard years. In fact, I kept at it for eighteen years.
That’s right, I struggled to grow my company for almost two decades. And I’m not ashamed to admit it now — the reason I couldn’t crack $1 million for eighteen years wasn’t bad luck. It was ignorance. I knew IT, and I knew business. But I hadn’t consolidated my knowledge into a single framework for growing my IT business.
But in year eighteen, things changed. Instead of banging my head against the same brick wall, I discovered — well, “fell upon” might be closer to the truth — a better way of doing things. Because I was in the right place at the right time connecting with the right people, I was lucky enough to experience a radical shift in my perspective on how to grow a successful IT company.
The “better way of doing things” I came to embrace is now The 20 — a company that gives managed service providers (MSPs) the tools, knowledge and resources to grow faster and scale more easily.
The 20 represents my desire to help business owners skip the ‘decades of struggle’ I had to endure, and get straight to the fun part: growing like crazy. Don’t get me wrong, I think there’s a lot to learn from struggle, but I also think that when there’s a faster, easier way to get from point A to point B, you take it! Besides, I’ve spent my life in IT, and it’s my privilege to give back to the industry that’s given me so much. I’ve made my money, and now I’m having a blast helping others make theirs.
That’s enough about me. Let’s talk about what The 20 actually is, and how it’s changing what’s possible for small and mid-sized MSPs.
Strength in Numbers
I mentioned that The 20 started as an idea — a simple “what if” that sparked my curiosity and relit the fire in my belly:
What if we joined forces?
The “we” here refers to separate MSPs, all working on our own separate islands, struggling to grow. After eighteen years of struggle, I stopped asking how I could grow my IT company, and started asking how we could grow our IT companies. This simple shift in perspective had profound consequences and led to the development of The 20’s revolutionary business model.
So, one way to answer the question “What is The 20?” is in terms of who’s in The 20:
The 20 is a group of MSPs who work together, sharing knowledge and resources, along with a US-based 24/7/365 Support Desk and National Footprint, to outsmart, outpace, and outGROW the competition.
A lot of people hear this and assume, given our company’s name, that there are twenty of us — that The 20 consists of twenty MSP members. So let me clear up the confusion…
The 20 has a lot more than twenty members; we’re currently at 180+ members, and we expect that number to hit 500 by 2025.
Bottom line — there’s plenty of room here at The 20! If there’s a ‘tipping point’ where adding new members is no longer conducive to our group’s success, we haven’t even begun to approach it. As The 20 grows, so too do its individual MSP members. The bigger we are, the bigger each one of us can be.
Why, then, are we called The 20, if not for the number of members in our group?
Our name comes from the Pareto principle, also known as the 80/20 rule. It states that 80% of effects come from 20% of the causes. In business terms, 20% of the players in a given industry — the “vital few” — get the lion’s share, while everyone else fights over the scraps. “The 20” refers to our commitment to helping MSPs join the “vital few” — i.e., become elite MSPs that dominate the market.
But how does it actually work? How does being a part of The 20 help an MSP become “elite”?
3 Challenges MSPs Must Overcome
We defined The 20 in terms of who’s in it, but we can also define it in terms of what’s in it — the “secret sauce” we’ve distilled from the expertise of hundreds of IT experts and business owners.
Our MSP members are awesome, and it’s no coincidence — we choose to work with business owners with great attitudes and a desire to succeed. That said, you could, in theory, replace our MSP members with other MSPs, and those MSPs would find success the same way our current members have. Why’s that?
Because our model WORKS! Or, as we like to say, this sh*t is awesome! The reason The 20’s approach to MSP growth is so effective is that it helps MSPs solve their 3 biggest pain points:
Lead Gen
Sales
Scale
Let’s talk about why each of these is so crucial to growing a successful MSP.
Lead Gen
This is where it all starts — where all growth originates: generating leads for your MSP. If your phone (or medium of choice) isn’t ringing, you’re not going to have much success. That’s as certain as death and taxes. But how do you get leads?
Most MSPs rely on word of mouth. While there’s nothing wrong with word of mouth per se, as a primary means for lead generation, it’s not going to cut it. It’s too inconsistent, too difficult to control, and too reliant on your network’s reach. If you want the type of steady growth that will transform your growing IT company into a thriving enterprise, you need to adopt a systematic and scalable approach to lead gen. There’s just no way around it.
This is where The 20 comes in. We take our MSP members’ marketing to the next level using the latest and best strategies for lead gen. Yes, this means we use automation, but automation without a proven system is just a buzzword. Our mature marketing program is committed to not only producing leads for our MSP members, but cultivating those leads, and eventually, guiding them to the finish line.
Is it possible for an MSP owner to figure out all of this stuff on their own? Sure, it’s possible — but why not makes things easier on yourself? You’re busy running a business. Do you really have time to research and test different approaches to marketing and lead gen? By plugging into The 20’s elite marketing, your MSP can start seeing real and measurable results right away.
Sales
Lead gen without robust sales is like a great recipe without a cook: useless! If you want to grow your MSP, you need a proven sales process that takes leads and converts them into clients. The key word here is process: your sales efforts need to be systematic and repeatable (i.e., scalable) if you want to see real growth, because in today’s ultra-competitive IT industry, nothing less will suffice.
Remember, B2B sales, especially with technical services like those provided by an MSP, are much more complex than B2C sales. It can take anywhere from 12 to 16 touches just to get an appointment! At The 20, we help our MSP members take their sales to the next level using automation solutions to drive sales cadence. Plain English translation: We use automation to ensure that you interact with prospects frequently enough — and in the right way — to convert them into clients.
Scale
The final piece of the puzzle, scale is absolutely essential to MSP growth. Scalability refers to the ability to adjust operations — technical processes, sales, marketing, etc. — to meet greater or lesser demand. The more scalable your MSP’s operations are, the more quickly and easily you can adapt your services to take on more/larger or fewer/smaller clients.
Traditionally, your MSP can only scale up/down by following the ‘Field of Dreams’ method: If you build it, they will come. This approach involves building up your operational capacities by doing things like hiring technicians, and then hoping you’ll get enough clients to
vindicate the front end investment. But if you don’t get those clients, you’ll have — to stick with our baseball metaphor — an empty stadium. Luckily, there’s a better way…
The 20 allows MSPs to scale up and down much more easily; we give our MSP members access to resources like a US-based 24/7/365 Support Desk, which can be utilized on a consumption basis.
So, let’s say a potential client approaches your MSP, but they have way more endpoints than you’re used to dealing with, as well as several locations on the other side of the country. If you’re like most MSPs, you have to tell them, “Sorry, we can’t help you. We don’t have enough people or locations.”
But if you’re a part of The 20, you can tell them, “We got you covered”; your MSP can instantly scale up its operations by reaching into The 20 and pulling the resources you need to serve the larger client. Other MSPs in The 20 can ‘come to the rescue,’ and since MSPs in The 20 all share a single service delivery model, you don’t need to tell your ‘extended MSP family’ how you do business to bring them up to speed. That’s the beauty of The 20 model, and the key to our members’ unrivalled growth.
Future-Proof Your MSP with The 20’s Blueprint
It’s an exciting time to be an MSP. The market is expanding rapidly (one reputable study predicts that it will grow from $242.9 billion in 2021 to $354.8 billion by 2026). However, it’s also getting more competitive, and small and mid-sized MSPs will be left fighting over scraps unless they can figure out a way to compete with ‘the big boys’ (check out my Forbes article for a more technical breakdown of what’s happening in the MSP space).
The 20 can help your MSP be ‘bigger than it is,’ so that you can remain competitive in an increasingly crowded industry. When you become a member of The 20, you don’t give up your business, you just augment it with our powerful platform for growth and the collective expertise of our community of world-class MSPs.
Life’s too short to wait on greatness. So don’t be like me and wait until eighteen years have gone by to start working smarter. The 20’s blueprint doesn’t make sense for every MSP, but if it makes sense for yours, get in touch with us today and start your growth journey now.
Meet Hunter Buchanan, Support Desk Technician!
Hunter Buchanan quickly became a tremendous asset to the entire team at The 20. Read below to find out more about Hunter.
What do you do here at The 20?
I close as many tickets as possible.
Describe The 20 in three words…
Learning, Collaboration, and Improvement.
As a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?
A professional hockey player.
What’s the most challenging thing about your job?
The most challenging thing about my job is having to learn all the details of the programs used.
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
I consider winning the state championship for high school hockey as my greatest achievement.
What do you think is the most important quality necessary for success?
The ability to learn, it’s impossible to make yourself better without being able to accept criticism and learn from your mistakes.
What do you like most about The 20?
The best part about working at The 20 is the people that I work with.
What do you like to do in your spare time? / What are your hobbies?
The Lerepco IT Group is an IT Service Provider located in Moorestown, NJ – part of the metro Philadelphia/Southern New Jersey area. My partner and I, each having about 30 years of IT experience, incorporated in December of 2013 with the idea of starting and growing our own IT practice.
How long have you been a member of The 20?
We’ve been a member of The 20 last spring.
Why did your MSP originally look to partner with The 20?
We were looking to have easy access to resources and expertise that would otherwise be expensive, inaccessible, or time-consuming to put in place. The idea was for The 20 to provide us the infrastructure to easily standardize our offering and scale our support team so that we could focus on growing the business.
Tell us about the biggest change in your business since joining The 20.
I am more focused on Marketing than ever before – especially social media.
What do you like most about being a member of The 20?
I appreciate that we benefit from The 20’s existing relationships with other MSPs and vendors. I like that we have an opportunity to talk to other providers that face similar technical and or sales challenges. I have already built new partnerships with other groups such as Netlogic and Axcient because of my relationship with The 20.
What do you think is the most important quality necessary for success?
As an IT person, I always thought that you had to provide the highest quality of skills and customer service to be successful. As a business owner, I quickly learned that if you don’t have a strong sales and marketing plan, you won’t have any clients to provide those services to! So yes, providing great service is critical to maintaining your client base, but I’ve learned that it’s imperative to invest time and money in Sales, Marketing, and especially a social media presence.
What are your biggest business challenges?
We are based in South Jersey where there is a strong and competitive presence with existing talented MSPs. So, for us being good technically is not good enough! Raising our Sales and Marketing plan to compete with those other MSPs in 2022 is our biggest challenge.
What are your areas of focus for 2022?
Sales! Sales! Sales! Growth! Growth! Growth!
What advice would you share with an MSP looking to scale their business?
Partner with someone like The 20 where you can get an economy of scale instantly – don’t try to build an entire IT team yourself. This will allow you to focus on Sales and Marketing – and growing the client base of your business.
Favorite blogs/podcasts
I don’t know that I follow any existing series of blogs or podcasts. I do read/watch/listen to a lot of different technical blogs/podcasts for educational purposes rather than entertainment purposes.
What brought you to The 20 & what keeps you here?
The technical scalability and ability to “borrow” ideas, marketing and techniques that work with other MSP’s.
What is the biggest problem The 20 solves for you?
Technical Resources and Scalability
Interested in becoming a member like The Lerepco IT Group? Click here for more information!
Taking Your Clients to the Cloud
A Perspective for MSPs
This article isn’t about why your MSP should be moving services to the cloud. It’s not about the value of cloud services to the typical small to mid-sized business. There are a million articles on those topics — including a few on this blog! Besides, if you’re in the managed services industry, you already know that the cloud is where it’s at — and where it’s going to be at for the next decade unless something drastic happens or an even better paradigm emerges.
As for your clients — the SMBs you serve — they’re likely warming up quickly to the cloud, and the many benefits it can bring their growing businesses. A survey published by Datto found that 93% of MSPs expect their clients to have at least half of their workloads in the cloud by 2024. The secret’s out — the cloud works, and it’s here to stay.
So, if your clients aren’t moving key IT functions to the cloud, it doesn’t matter what their reason is — maybe they’re just being complacent, or maybe they still don’t trust the cloud —it’s your responsibility as their MSP to get them on board. MSPs exist because the break/fix model is no longer enough; an organization chooses to work with an MSP in order to streamline their entire IT infrastructure in a way that allows for greater operational efficiency and overall profitability. You can’t help clients achieve this while also indulging their nephophobia (yes, that means a ‘fear of clouds’). Ten years ago, maybe you could, but not now. Not in 2022.
What is this article about, then, if not why your MSP and its clients should be pro-cloud?
It’s about how to get clients on board with cloud computing, and how to help clients who already are on board get the most out of their adoption of cloud-based services.
Conquering Clients’ Nephophobia
Assume Nothing
Unfortunately, many SMB owners are still fundamentally wary about the cloud. The very idea of cloud computing makes them uneasy — or, rather, their idea of cloud computing. It’s crucial to keep in mind, when broaching the topic of adopting cloud-based offerings with your clients, that many SMB owners still think of the cloud as … well, a literal cloud. In our first blog post in this series on cloud computing, we brought up a favorite joke among IT people: There is no cloud. It’s just someone else’s computer. The reason this joke is popular is because it contains, like any good joke, a strong element of truth. People often do believe — even if on an unconscious level — that the cloud is somehow less physically real than traditional computing technology.
Bottom line — don’t assume your clients know what the cloud even is, let alone how it can help their businesses run more smoothly. Before delving into the different cloud service models (IaaS vs PaaS vs SaaS) with a client, or explaining the many business benefits of cloud computing (greater scalability, agility, flexibility, etc.), make sure your client understands the basics: what the cloud is and how it works. Use analogies to get away from IT jargon, while bearing in mind that these analogies are often imperfect. If you patiently break down cloud computing into familiar concepts at the outset, it will save you lots of time and effort down the road when you need to persuade your clients to evolve their cloud infrastructure even more.
Keep It Concrete
Another important thing to keep in mind when discussing the cloud with clients is the importance of keeping the conversation concrete. When you are absolutely certain that a client understands what the cloud is, and you’ve started discussing the business benefits of cloud computing, don’t just harp on about greater ‘scalability’ and ‘business agility.’ Give the buzzwords a rest, and instead, describe concrete scenarios in which cloud-based services would be of help. This is where being intimately familiar with a client’s business is powerful. You know specific struggles your clients have had, crises they’ve endured. Don’t be afraid to bring those up. “Remember the time that server crashed …” Make them feel the need for cloud computing in their gut. Make it feel REAL.
Don’t Sugarcoat
Finally, while you don’t want to engage in fear-mongering, lean into making your clients feel the urgency of the need to move business to the cloud. Bring up a few statistics that show just how popular cloud-services are becoming. Tell them the SMBs that hold out on the cloud for a few more years will simply be too far behind to catch up when they finally decide to get with the program and adopt cloud-computing for major IT functions. In other words, tell them the truth.
Helping Clients Get to Cloud Nine
Let’s say you’ve got a client who has embraced the importance of cloud computing, and who has a basic grasp of the ways in which cloud-based services can help usher their business into the future. What now? Is your job done?
Not at all. In fact, that’s just the beginning. A client who’s eager to adopt cloud-based services — hopefully most if not all of your clients fit this bill — stands to get the most out of their migration if they conceptualize it in the right way. This is where you come in, as their MSP. By framing the value and role of cloud-based services in the right way for your SMB clients, you can help them commit more fully and enthusiastically to their cloud transformation. So, how should your MSP go about framing things?
First, it’s essential that you clarify what your role is as their MSP. Convey to clients — through marketing, through direct interactions, and most importantly, through your actions — that your job is to guide them in a continuous and ongoing digital transformation. In the context of orchestrating their move to the cloud, this means getting them to see that the migration isn’t a ‘one-and-done’ kind of deal. It’s not like once an SMB is ‘in the cloud,’ it can rest on its laurels. On the contrary, an SMB in today’s fast-paced digital world has to maintain and continually improve upon its cloud infrastructure, and remain on the lookout for the best cloud-based offerings on the market. This is of course a tall order, which is why
more and more SMBs and turning to MSPs for help with their cloud strategy. But the first step in getting your clients to turn to you for help is getting them to see the need for help.
Digital transformation expert, Bernard Marr, predicts that one of the biggest cloud trends in 2022 will be a shift in focus from “the deployment of cloud tools and platforms in order to improve a specific function … towards more holistic strategies centered on enterprise-wide cloud migration” (read Marr’s Full Forbes article here). This strikes us as spot on, which is why we’re urging MSPs to take initiative in explaining to their clients that when it comes to a business living in the cloud, there are levels. What counts as being a cloud-oriented business now is different from what will count in a year, two years … five years.
In fact, the term “digital transformation” might be a misnomer. A better term is “digital evolution,” as it better captures the ongoing nature of digitalization. If you can get your clients to adopt this perspective, you won’t have to twist their arm every time you want to introduce a new cloud-based service into their IT environment — they’ll be right there with you, eager to take the next step in their cloud journey.
Facilitate Your Clients’ Cloud Migrations with The 20’s Platform
The rise of the cloud presents your MSP with a golden opportunity. Moving your clients’ IT functions to the cloud was the first step. Now, in 2022, MSPs face a new challenge: perfecting and refining their clients’ cloud strategies to accommodate remote/hybrid work, repel cyberattacks, and integrate different (and currently somewhat disparate) cloud-based solutions into a cohesive whole. If you can do all that, you’ll add tremendous value to your clients’ businesses and earn even more of their trust.
It can be hard to ensure your clients get the most out of their digital transformation and cloud migrations. Are you using the best tools for the job? At The 20, we have worked with multiple vendors to create a scalable solution for MSPs using tools such as Nerdio, which makes it easy to set up Azure for SMBs and beyond, and Crayon, which enables organizations to optimize their cloud environments and get the most bang for their buck.
Learn more about The 20 — who we are and how we’ve helped hundreds of MSPs get to the top of the IT industry.
The Pareto Principle, or the 80/20 rule, states that 20% of any given causes lead to 80% of any following effects (give or take). What this means is that 20% of your effort is going to yield 80% of your reward, 20% of your sales will yield 80% of your revenue and so on. While every marketing or sales program mentions the Pareto Principle, very few describe how it actually applies to real life. Some materials will even tout it as a law: All you have to do is hit 20%, and you get a B in sales.
This isn’t a given, though. It’s going to work out like this over the long run, but certain niches in certain markets won’t follow this at certain scales, and there are factors that complicate it. The problem is that while 20% might get you 80%, the other 80% only gets you 20%. So, the question becomes exactly how do you get the right 20%?
This is the major implication of the Pareto Principle. While 20% gets you 80%, that 20% is only one-fifth of your prospective market. How can you apply this principle to actually make the most of it while reducing your risk? Do you bet on 20%, or how can you split the odds? How can the Pareto Principle be extended and shaped into other applicable rules?
Implications Of The Pareto Principle
While 20% gets you 80%, the other 80% gets you only 20%. Any campaign or endeavor is going to have to work out, whether it’s hitting the right 20% or not. If you aren’t targeting the right segment(s) of the market, you run the risk of 4:1 odds for hitting the jackpot. It’s not a zero-sum game, but statistically, you’re looking at an average of 6.4% for your 20% effort if your distribution and targeting are random (4% of the 80% jackpot and 16% of the 20% remainder).
Obviously, no one is hitting their targets at random. But many leaders fail to think through the implications of their decisions. Are you basing your decisions on actual data throughout the process, or are you making assumptions? Is your data solid, and are the metrics derived from it right?
The other implication of the Pareto Principle is that the rule tends to hold true on multiple levels. If you put forth 20% of the effort on a process, you can get up to 80% efficiency. As you chain processes, you’ll get diminishing returns as less effort is put in at any given step. Sometimes this means that you get more than expected with the right application; other times, people expect that the 20% they put in gets them 80% even though they skipped important steps.
Applying The Pareto Principle
The whole principle breaks down when you cut the wrong parts out. Relying on just the Pareto Principle to carry you is going to be a disaster, so how exactly do you actually apply it?
You obviously have to know where your 20% of effort is best applied. The other side to this is how much can you bring in bulk where you don’t know what matters? If cutting something reduces the work by a single percent, and is almost a rounding error in cost, is it actually worth cutting or not? There isn’t going to be an objectively right or wrong answer; it’s going to depend on what’s at play. You have to know what works and what doesn’t.
Since this is going to also stack, you need to know what the implications mean for a given task. If a task is central to your work but isn’t your specialty, should you try to rely on the Pareto Principle? It might be worth the gamble, but you’re probably not coming out ahead of the house. The more that you do, which depends on a given process, the closer you want to get to 100% efficiency. The same applies to stages you’re unsure of.
Extending The Pareto Principle
While the Pareto Principle is often parroted over and over, the fact that it is also referred to as the Pareto Distribution is largely ignored. The (more) recently popular “1-50 Rule” derives from this, stating that 1% of the tasks or effort can get 50% of the results. Mathematically, it makes sense. Basically, you run the Pareto Principle three times, and you find that with the right targeting, roughly 1% of the effort (20% of 20% of 20%, which is 0.8%) will get you about 50% of the results (80% of 80% of 80%, which is 51.2%).
Each mistake compounds. Hitting the wrong 20% means that you take your efficiency down a massive amount. One single miss, and your peak efficiency at 0.8% effort goes down to 3.2% of the results. You get in more than you put in, but you can’t rely on it, either, unless you know where to properly apply your shortcuts.
The Pareto Principle is extremely powerful when applied correctly, but it can quickly become a dangerous crutch. Is the principle working for you, or are you trying to work for it? Like anything, if you let yourself Dunning-Kruger the application, you’ll find that the essential 20% is always out of reach. The principle can help you or it can hurt you, but the only way to know which way it will go is to either rely on luck or science. What odds are you betting on?
2021 in Review
2021 was an amazing year here at The 20! We are proud of our accomplishments and the company culture we have established. Within the last twelve months, we have hit many milestones.
Here are some of the highlights from the past year…
Closed nearly over 45,000 tickets!
Increased our footprint in 24 markets
74 new employees hired
Featured in over 50 articles and publications
Received 10+ awards
Published 80 blog posts
Established 4 new vendor partnerships
Held 50+ webinars
Produced 300+ pieces of marketing collateral for MSP
Attended 52 events (Check out our 2022 event calendar here)
Not to mention, we had 300+ attendees at our VISION’21 Conference! Make sure you save the date for VISION 2022, to be held October 4th through October 7th.
Check out our 2021 in Review recap video
Meet Tony Holmes, IT Support Desk Specialist!
Tony Holmes quickly became a tremendous asset to the entire team at The 20. Read below to find out more about Tony.
What do you do here at The 20?
Technical support for various MSPs.
Describe The 20 in three words…
Welcoming, Innovative, Fast Paced
As a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?
As a kid, my occupation aspirations changed from a Doctor to a lawyer.
What’s the most challenging thing about your job?
The most challenging thing about my job is keeping up with the various technologies and procedures dealing with the different msps we support.
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
I considered owning my own business for over ten years to be my greatest achievement, but this pandemic made me realize my greatest achievement is yet to come!
What do you think is the most important quality necessary for success?
Persistence.
What do you like most about The 20?
The way everyone here is willing to share their level of expertise with one another.
What do you like to do in your spare time? / What are your hobbies?
I enjoy a good cigar and listening to music in my spare time. My other hobbies are sound exploration through modular synthesis and music production.
