More Than a Peer Group: How The 20 Helps MSPs Shine
Your MSP can’t survive on an island. Or maybe it can. Maybe, just maybe, you can, without strategic partnerships, without peer groups, without industry events, without any of that, hang in there and eke out a living long-term. Maybe.
But you don’t start a company because you want to be like ninety-nine percent of people, struggling to make ends meet. If you’re like most of the MSP owners we encounter – including the 150+ MSP owners in The 20’s tent – you want to build something great.
We started The 20 because we know most of you small and medium-sized MSPs out there have big dreams – but not necessarily the means to achieve them. But just what is The 20? It’s a “peer group,” yes – or if you like fancy terms, a “business consortium,” but it’s much more than that. So much more…
The Pain Points of the Lone Wolves
MSPs working alone ‘on an island’ face a litany of challenges that can severely limit their growth. Let’s talk about some of the most common pain points plaguing standalone MSPs.
Not-So-Smooth Scaling
MSPs working alone struggle with scale (i.e., the ability to adjust to increasing/decreasing demands effectively). Whether it’s scaling up services to accommodate more/larger clients or scaling down services during a slow period, smaller firms have trouble finding the ‘sweet spot’ between two extremes:
- Fully reactive scaling where you scramble to adjust your services to meet a change in demand.
- Fully proactive scaling (aka the ‘if you build it…’ approach) where you build out capabilities to handle more/larger clients before you’ve even landed them.
These approaches are fundamentally flawed for obvious reasons; fully reactive scaling leads to inefficiencies, stress, and poor service delivery, while fully proactive scaling can easily result in wasted resources. Finding the happy medium between these two ineffective approaches is extremely challenging for a smaller MSP that relies primarily on hiring as a method of scaling.
Sales & Marketing Blues
Sales and marketing have been – and continue to be – weak points for MSPs, especially small and medium-sized firms with limited resources. But from our vantage point, the reason for this has changed somewhat.
In the early days, MSPs’ sales and marketing efforts were lackluster for two reasons. One, the initial ‘gold rush’ in managed IT services meant that MSPs could achieve a burst of growth on the back of demand alone, without needing to sell and market their services in a savvy manner. Second, many MSPs are run by technical-minded individuals who often overlook the value of sales and marketing, resulting in minimal time and effort devoted to these areas.
But times have changed. As our industry became more competitive, even the more stubborn and marketing-averse MSPs came to accept the necessity of both sales and marketing. So, why are MSPs still underperforming on these fronts?
The new answer to this question is that MSPs – especially small and medium-sized ones operating on an island – simply don’t have the time or resources to sell and market effectively.
This all ties back to scale. When your operations lack scalability, keeping pace with client needs is a full-time job – and then some! MSPs operating in isolation are typically drowning in day-to-day work; there simply aren’t enough hours in the day to keep up with end client requests and sell/market services effectively.
Trial-and-Error (Emphasis on Error!)
We see this all the time: MSPs that come to us for help are stuck in the ‘experimentation phase.’ To be clear, experimentation isn’t a bad thing per se, as growing a successful company, regardless of industry, takes risk-taking, experimentation, innovation, etc. However, it’s a question of degree.
The truth is, the one thing that sabotages an MSP’s growth more than anything else is endless tinkering. Tinkering with tools. Tinkering with processes. Tinkering with team make-up. The tinkering isn’t the problem, but the amount of tinkering certainly is. Perhaps it’s a product of a ‘technical’ vs. a ‘business’ mindset. Or maybe it’s more of a matter of not knowing the alternative. But the bottom line is clear:
MSP executives often undermine their company’s growth by experimenting endlessly with different combinations or tools and processes.
This endless quest for ‘the perfect stack’ comes from a good place – the desire to be excellent – but that doesn’t make it any less detrimental to growth. Why? Because it’s a gigantic time-suck!
The 20 to the Rescue!
The 20’s business model is built around helping small and medium-sized MSPs overcome their primary pain points. We’re not the only peer group/growth platform around, but we are unique in several respects. And what makes us different makes all the difference…
Scaling Made Easy
When you become a member of The 20, your scaling problems quickly become a thing of the past. How do we help your MSP become more scalable? Two ways:
First, we give you standardized – and well-documented – processes. These processes are efficient, clear, and repeatable, all key ingredients for scalability. If you’re intent on doing things your way, The 20 isn’t right for you. The strength of our group comes directly from the strength of our individual members’ buy-in. We need everyone under a single operational umbrella and service delivery model for our Support Desk to do what it does, which is deliver speedy and stellar support to all our members’ end clients.
The second way we make your MSP more scalable is by giving your clients unlimited access to our acclaimed, 100% US-based, 24/7/365 Support Desk and Network Operations Center (NOC). With our large team of experts at your back – answering the phone and resolving your clients’ issues swiftly and efficiently – you can confidently expand your client base without the headaches of hiring and training additional staff. It’s a beautiful thing.
Moreover, you can take on bigger clients with full confidence that you have the bandwidth to support them. One of our current members, Mark Adair of Adair Technology, recently spoke about this particular benefit of membership, and its relationship to sales:
“Being a member of The 20 has helped us operate bigger than we are really. Coming from a small team where we handled every issue, it created problems for us when it came time to scale. We’d do sales and then be afraid that we couldn’t support the sale…With The 20, we’ve been able to utilize the help desk. We can sell and know that we can service it after the sale.”
This is music to our ears, as our primary goal is to allow MSPs to be ‘bigger than they are.’ While standalone MSPs can’t take on larger clients without having to worry about scaling services accordingly, our members can approach companies with hundreds of endpoints and say: We’ve got you!
But what makes Mark so confident that The 20 will take great care of his clients and preserve his MSP’s pristine reputation? Let’s talk about that!
Not Outsourced – Extended.
When you become a member of The 20, you are, in a very basic sense, choosing to outsource a significant portion of your ticket load to our 24/7, US-based Support Desk. In fact, we can take on 90% of your tickets, freeing you and your team up to tackle higher-value projects.
But ‘outsourcing’ can imply handing over your business to some distant third-party that doesn’t really understand your team, your clients, or your MSP business. It can also be associated with underwhelming service.
That’s why we prefer to call ourselves an extension of your team, as we believe that better captures the role we play for our MSP members. For one, we get to know you and your MSP business through in-person events like Propel and VISION, close collaboration, and dedicated account managers.
Second, our MSP members are operationally aligned, and so, even though we take time to learn how your MSP works, this learning curve is greatly reduced by the simple fact that we largely standardize our members’ operations. MSPs that belong to The 20 are singing from the same sheet of music, which means our Support Desk doesn’t have to juggle a bunch of disparate workflows.
Finally, we have a robust national footprint with boots on the ground in nearly every state (soon to be every). That means we can provide onsite assistance to our MSP members’ end clients, just like – that’s right – an extension of your own team.
Many Heads > One
This one is huge. Simply put, MSPs in The 20 tend to be smarter, faster, and more adaptive than standalone MSPs. Why? Because they have each other!
When Tim Conkle founded The 20, he had a hunch that a bunch of competitors could become each other’s greatest resource. Turns out they can – and then some. We are time and again amazed by how much our members talk and help each other out. In an industry as big and fast-moving as ours, having a group of people who are…
- Trying to do what you’re trying to do (grow a successful MSP business)
- Approaching things in a similar way (using the same service delivery model)
- Willing to share what they know
…isn’t just a nice thing to have; it’s a game-changer! One of our current members, Seana Fippin, shared how much this community’s commitment to collaboration has helped her MSP, Red Box Business Solutions, reach new heights:
“We’ve been a 20 partner for about six years now, and have grown with the organization significantly. We think that the community here is really remarkable – there’s something magic about that collaboration and strength in numbers, both from working with vendors, with partners, working on best practices and strategies.”
Well said, Seana!
The Whole Kit and Kaboodle
While the competition continues to ‘tinker,’ our MSP members hit the ground running with a battle-tested stack and business model. After our recent acquisition of Collabrance, we can now support MSPs on either a Kaseya or a ConnectWise tool stack, but here’s the key: whatever tools you use, we will bring your operations into alignment with our single service delivery model.
This means you and your end clients can expect a seamless, integrated experience across all essential services like RMM, cybersecurity, backup and disaster recovery, and more. No more trial-and-error – just smooth sailing and smooth scaling!
Additionally, with our network’s size, we can get your MSP access to the best pricing through economies of scale, while also taking on the responsibility of managing vendor relationships. One of our members, Chris Engler of Engler IT, commented on how much joining The 20 has helped him with vendor management:
“There’s always technology providers knocking at my door…It’s a whole full-time job to try to sort through these guys, so that you can find good technologies – you have to vet them, make sure they’re going to do what they say they’re going to do…The 20 helps us do that very efficiently.”
That’s the name of the game, folks – efficiency. When you join The 20, your MSP gets a fully integrated and optimized business model: everything you need, all in one place. This prevents major operational hiccups while allowing you to sidestep the decade (or more) of trial-and-error most MSPs have to endure before achieving operational maturity.
Time to Shine
All of the above brings us to our last – and arguably most important – benefit of becoming a member of The 20: you get your time back!
As previously mentioned, most MSPs are severely hampered by a lack of time. They’re bogged down by everyday tasks, and as a result, don’t engage in those high-impact and strategic initiatives which really drive new growth. Yes, we’re talking about sales and marketing, but we’re also talking about enhancing operational efficiency, strengthening client relationships, and investing in new technology.
In essence, we lift MSP owners up from the ‘muck’ of the daily grind, so they can view their businesses more clearly as a whole. Just ask Greg Padgett, a current member and CEO of Eagle’s Wings Technologies:
“When I met him [Tim Conkle, CEO of The 20], I had determined I was tired of just making myself a job; I wanted a business. Joining The 20 helped me to get out of that hole that I had built for myself, and be able to stand up above the company and look into it and see what needed to change, and make those hard decisions to make those changes.”
That’s the long and the short of it right there: getting away from working in your MSP so you can start working on it – and start growing it.
Stronger Together
Our motto here at The 20 is “stronger together,” because that’s exactly what we are. Compared to the competition, the MSPs in our group can do more with less, scale faster, and grow bigger.
We’re a peer group, sure. But we’re also a community, a growth engine, a winning and scalable business model, a knowledge factory, and your MSP’s ticket to the next level.
Get in touch today to learn more about our approach and to see if your MSP meets our requirements for membership.