MSP is dead!

Don't you wish...cloud boy! Buah, ha, ha, ha...

I just thought I'd start off the year with a big controversial headline. The reality, of course, is that MSP is alive and well, in spite of the economy, the cloud and the flood of wannabes that are emerging from the woodworks, adding MSP to their line card, and coming up with "me too" offerings.

I'm actually very excited about 2010. My company has actually changed its sales model (a bit) and the changes are putting me back (somewhat) into the forefront of the sales arena and I'm very excited about it.

To start with, a few years ago, we came up with several "lite versions" of our MSP program. Sure, we had great reasons for doing it but I think, in the end, it turned out not to be a great idea. We now have a remote only offering, we have a "mostly monitoring and patching" offering, and I think we did a crappy job at positioning those products. Instead of defining when those products needed to to sold, in order to fill a niche, they were positioned as lower priced options. The reality is that our full service, total care offering is the best value. The lower priced options could end up costing more, if it's not what the end-user really needs.

Of course, everyone is ready to blame the economy..."companies are only willing to commit to our lowest price option". This is just not true. Yes, companies are looking at every dollars but no one will take something that appears to be lower priced, if they understand that it's going to cost them more. Instead, they become disgruntled. They remember the lower contracted price and will act bewildered at why their bills are not fixed at that price.

I recall years ago, before we had the lite versions, talking to other MSPs who had multiple offerings. They were always surprised when we told them that all of our customer were "full on MSP, total care, and (for the most part) AYCE, All You Can Eat". They couldn't seem to get their clients onto that model...but 100% of our clients were there. I believe the reason was, because they had lesser plans and we didn't. Because they had plans with a lower price of entry, their salespeople were taking the easy road, presenting all the plans, and failing to sell the client on the higher value proposition slightly higher priced plan.

Well, "Phoooey!" on that. I'm back in sales and I'm selling full-on MSP to clients who are going to be 100% satisfied with our services. And it's got to be even easier now because I can reduce my clients IT spending even more by leveraging our hosted-"cloud" solutions, SPLA, HaaS, the list goes on.

I said, "Look out boys, I got a license to fly".
That Caddy pulled over and let us by...

Until next time.
- R