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Grow Your MSP 10x Faster With Co-managed IT May 11, 2026

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Hello and welcome to a very special edition of the podcast. For the first time ever, we’re doing a complete deep dive into one of the biggest growth opportunities available to your MSP right now… co-managed IT. Welcome to Episode 339 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge. Grow Your MSP 10x Faster With Co-managed IT Before I get into it, I want to tell you something about how we prepared for this episode, because I think that’s going to matter. So some background… we’re launching a new co-managed IT marketing membership, and I’ll tell you more about that at the end of the podcast, although if you do want to sneak peek, it’s on my website right now at mspmarketingedge.com/membership. Anyway, to help us get this right from day one, over the last six months, my team and I have done hundreds and hundreds of hours of research into this topic. We’ve interviewed IT directors, real ones who actually buy co-managed IT, so people who sit in the role that your MSP will be trying to reach if you did this. And we’ve also interviewed MSPs who already have co-managed clients and are winning more of them. And all of that work has helped us to build a new membership. And of course, it’s also got into this podcast episode. So what you’re going to hear or see today isn’t just my opinion about marketing to IT directors, it’s grounded in what they actually told us. In their own words about how they think, what they fear and what they want, and crucially, how they make buying decisions. In fact, throughout this episode, I’m going to play you some clips from one of those research conversations. It was an interview I did with an IT director who was very open with us, and I’m operating here on the principle that it’s better to seek forgiveness than it is to ask permission so he doesn’t know I’m playing these clips. Let’s keep this a secret, shall we? To protect his privacy, his voice has been filtered, and I’m going to call him Dave. Obviously, that’s not his real name, but these are his real words, completely unscripted. And remember, the call that I did with him was a research call six months ago. It wasn’t an interview. I’ve picked Dave for this because he really gave us insight into the emotions that an IT director goes through when they think about partnering with an MSP. And I think when you hear him speak, it’s going to change how you think about this massive opportunity. So, four things we’re going to cover today. First of all, what co-managed IT actually is, and just as importantly, what it isn’t. Number two, who makes the buying decision. Number three, why businesses choose co-managed. Number four, how you need to position and market yourself differently if you want to win this kind of work. Let’s go. What co-managed IT is and what it isn’t The single biggest mistake that MSPs make when they try to enter the co-managed market is assuming that it’s just a variation of what they already do. They take the same messaging that they use for business owners and bolt the words co-managed onto the front. And then they wonder why the conversation dies. Well, it dies because the buyer is completely different and a different buyer needs completely different language. In traditional B2B sales, you’re usually talking to a business owner or a senior manager who doesn’t live inside technology every day like you do. They don’t really want to understand it. They don’t want to talk about governance, architecture, service tiers, all of that stuff. What they want is relief. They just want someone to take all of the technology away from them. And that’s why phrases like, “We handle everything” or “Leave your IT to us”, they work so well in B2B marketing because you’re selling peace of mind to someone who just wants the problem to disappear. But here’s the thing, an IT director doesn’t want the problem to disappear. The problem is their job, their professional identity, their credibility, their authority, their reputation inside the business they work for. And all of it is tied up to how well the technology environment runs. So if you walk into that conversation sounding like you’re about to take control, then of course the conversation’s going to stop immediately because that IT director hears a threat from you and not an offer from you. The right way to define co-managed IT is this… you’re not replacing internal IT, you’re strengthening it. The internal IT team keeps strategic ownership, they still set the direction, define the standards, and own the relationship with the leadership team. But your MSP provides clearly defined operational capacity and specialist expertise within agreed boundaries. That framing changes everything because now you’re not a threat, you’re a resource. And let’s hear this directly from IT director, Dave, because he described the pressure that creates the need for reinforcement better than I ever could. The reality is you’ve never got enough resource to do everything. And obviously the smaller the business, the more likely that’s the case. So I think they will always want the resource and the support. It’s just getting a foot in the door and proving trustworthy and proving that you can wear their hat, as it were. Wear their hat – I love that phrase because that’s exactly what co-managed requires of your MSP. Not to impose your way of doing things, but to understand their world deeply enough that you can operate inside it on their terms. Now, let me give you a few real world pictures of when co-managed makes sense, because it’s not just about headcount. Think about a manufacturing company with 250 staff and a two-person IT team. The team is capable and respected internally, but the business has grown. Multiple sites, increasing security requirements, and a constant flow of operational tickets. And every quarter, there’s a list of strategic projects that the IT director wants to complete, but operational noise consumes most of the team’s time. So those projects keep slipping. Nothing’s broken, but the structure’s under a lot of pressure. And that’s a co-managed conversation. Or think about a business where one senior engineer holds most of the institutional knowledge about the infrastructure because he built it, he understands it, but if he leaves or if he gets sick or is just unavailable during an incident, then the organisation is exposed. That’s also a co-managed conversation. Again, not because anything’s gone wrong, but because the risk of something going wrong is too high. You’re not fixing failure, you’re strengthening something that already works. Who makes the buying decisions? Now this is where it gets really interesting and also where a lot of MSPs get caught out. Because unlike a standard B2B sale where you’re largely dealing with one decision maker, co-managed deals usually involved two distinct groups with very different priorities. The first group is the IT directors themselves, and they understand the operational case better than anyone. They know the team is stretched and they know the risks of that. They also know what a co-managed partner could give to them. But here’s the part that many MSP owners underestimate. They also carry the greatest personal exposure in this decision. If the partnership works well, it reflects really positively on them. It looks like strategic thinking, it looks like leadership. But if it creates friction or disruption or confusion, that also reflects on them, in a way that a business owner just doesn’t experience. You and me, we take risks as business owners all the time, right? If a decision costs us some money, that hurts, but it’s our money. There’s no risk to our reputation amongst our team. There’s just risk to a bit of money and a bit of time. But IT director’s decisions are judged by people above them. By their executives, their peers, sometimes even a board. So when they consider bringing in an MSP, they’re not just evaluating your capability, they’re evaluating their own exposure. They’re asking themselves a quiet, private question in their heart. “How will this decision make me look?” I asked IT director Dave about this, about how he’d feel if the MSP he was working with was positioned strategically to the board, and his answer was very revealing. With that kind of thing, it might be better to position it as… the name that jumps out in terms of what it is, is “virtual IT director”, but as you say, that’s potentially a threat. So probably you want to sell it as “virtual IT leadership”, something like that so that it’s not threatening and it’s there to support you and to give you another set of eyes. Did you hear what he just said? You have to make it not threatening. And this is why you have to be very careful with your marketing and the specific words that you use during marketing and sales meetings to not sound like you’re trying to replace the IT director or the internal IT team. You’re there to offer reinforcement. It’s the same service, you’re doing the same things but psychologically it’s positioned completely differently. That’s the kind of precision that you require when you’re marketing co-managed IT. So that’s IT directors. The second group involved in the buying decision is the executive leadership. So maybe the CEO, the CFO or the board. And these people aren’t evaluating you technically in any way. They’re evaluating structural stability. “Does this reduce risk? Does it make the business more resilient? Is it more sustainable than hiring extra IT people internally?” And here’s the thing, any change to IT structure carries perceived danger at board level. Even if their current model is way overstretched, it’s familiar. And introducing an external partner like you can feel like adding complexity and risk, unless you frame it very carefully. And one really important thing that our research revealed is that bigger businesses run on budget cycles. There are times that they can make buying decisions and there are times that they cannot make buying decisions. Now, this is something I genuinely hadn’t thought about before because as a business owner, I make buying decisions based on cash in the bank. Do you do the same or do you have a budget? Well, listen to this. And just for some context, I recorded this with IT director Dave at the back end of last year. This all works in budget cycles. Our budget year is July to June. We had our first budget meetings in February. I’ve just put in dates for February for next year and we’ll agree CapEx and OpEx spend through that process between February and April for that July to June. So we kind of have the big wrestling matches at that point, and then broadly speaking that’s it. That kind of knowledge is gold dust if you’re doing co-managed IT sales, because you could have the most perfectly positioned conversation in the world with an IT director in August, but if nothing can happen till February, that’s nothing to do with you, you can’t change that, it’s all to do with them and the business and the budgetary cadence that they operate within. Understanding budget cycles means you can plan your outreach to land at exactly the right moment. And if you get into the budget conversation early enough, you can get locked in before the decision’s even formally made. Why businesses choose co-managed IT Let’s talk about the signals that tell you a business is ready for this conversation because the decision to bring in co-managed support rarely starts with someone saying, “We need help”, it starts with pressure. Pressure that’s been building slowly, that’s become so normal the IT director has almost stopped noticing it. The first signal is sustained capacity pressure. So projects constantly slipping, security initiatives planned but never implemented, and strategic improvements repeatedly delayed. When an IT director tells you they’re coping, listen very carefully, because coping is not thriving. Coping means the structure is running right at the edge. I’m full. Everyone on my team is full, IT is full. So everyone will have challenges and the smaller the business, you don’t know what you don’t know. That’s a big thing. You don’t know what you don’t know. That’s such an important phrase, because a lot of IT directors in smaller businesses are stretched so thin they don’t have the bandwidth to even identify the gaps. They’re just too busy filling them, which means your MSP has an opportunity to be this set of eyes that sees the problems that they can’t see themselves. The second signal is security overwhelm, and this one is bigger than ever right now. Internal teams are expected to manage infrastructure, support users, maintain uptime, and simultaneously keep pace with an expanding and genuinely terrifying threat landscape. That dual pressure creates silent strain. And IT director Dave was very clear about what keeps him up at night. Without a doubt it’s the fact that, certainly in our business, there’s more and more operational tech. IT has always been centre of companies, but now it’s right there stopping the work in some cases from happening. So these systems going down and what we refer to as a catastrophic event, which is the big ransomware type attack, that is absolutely horrifying. Horrifying… that’s the word he just used. And I want you to sit with that for a second because that’s the emotional state of the person that you’re trying to reach here. Not mildly concerned, not keeping an eye on it… horrified at what could happen if the worst occurs. Unlike the normal business owners that we try to sell to who don’t understand how horrendous a ransomware attack can be, these are IT people. They know. It’s like when a doctor gets ill, they know exactly what it means and what the consequences are, whereas normal patients just don’t. Here’s something else Dave said that really struck me about when cyber attacks tend to happen. And the first thing he’s going to mention is a supermarket chain here in the UK. And when he talks about bank holiday, that’s a term we use here in the UK for a public holiday when the whole country gets a day off. If we take the Co-op attack in the summer, 5pm on a Friday that started. Bank holiday, Friday… that’s when someone’s going to go because you’ve usually got less staff, more skeleton staff going into a weekend… less eyes. And if it wasn’t being watched overnight, you’re probably too late. Friday afternoon, a holiday weekend, that’s when they come. You know that already, of course. And you know the answer to this is having a SOC and 24/7 monitoring. I guess these are all things that you can buy in and you can supply to the internal IT team that you’re supporting. That’s the kind of thinking that they’ve got. Although selling co-managed IT to them is not about talking about services and capabilities, not really until you get down to the nitty gritty of contract details anyway. It’s about knowing what you can do to help them sleep better every single day, and that’s really important. The third signal is what I’d call knowledge concentration. When too much institutional knowledge sits with one or two key individuals. In that situation, the business becomes fragile, and that’s not a competence problem, is it? It’s a resilience problem. And then the fourth signal is reactive dominance, where most of the team’s time is spent firefighting rather than planning. When that happens, governance weakens, documentation gets outdated, strategic thinking evaporates. And none of that means the team is failing. It just means the model is overstretched. How to position and market your MSP to win co-managed IT contracts Let me start this final section with four mistakes that MSPs commonly make when they try to enter this market, because avoiding these is as important as anything else. Mistake number one is using the wrong language… taking B2B messaging and putting it in front of IT directors. Now we’ve covered this, it signals takeover and resistance, so your…

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Find new MSP clients: Only THIS marketing works May 04, 2026

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Your MSP’s marketing should feel repetitive to you but fresh to the people seeing it… here’s how that works. Also this week, what margins should you aim for and how to increase them, and you can be an influencer in your marketplace without taking photos of your dinner. Welcome to Episode 338 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge. Why your marketing should feel repetitive to you, and fresh for prospects Your MSP’s marketing should feel repetitive to you, but fresh to the people seeing it. And I know that sounds like a kind of a strange goal at first, because when something feels repetitive, most of us assume we’re doing something wrong. We assume we should mix it up and try new things and be more creative. But actually, when it comes to marketing your MSP, the opposite is true. Now, I’m a huge fan of marketing systems. And by that, I mean a simple set of activities that you do on a regular basis. Small tasks, repeated daily or weekly. Things like publishing a blog or recording a podcast, posting on LinkedIn, emailing your list, putting out videos. None of these things are individually spectacular, but they have a power, which comes from doing all of them consistently every day and every week. Now here’s the interesting bit, if you run a proper marketing system for your MSP it will eventually start to feel boring to you. I’m recording this podcast for the 338th time. So every week since November 2019 I’ve sat down, decided what I want to talk about, written myself a script, and then recorded it. And obviously I’ve had holidays and vacations along the way, but in that instance, I just do two podcasts in a week so I never get behind. It is a hamster wheel, I will tell you. And writing the script is not a thrilling creative adventure every week, I’ll be honest. It’s a job, it’s a task in the system. And of course I still enjoy it, but I have to sit down, I have to write it, I have to record it. My team, I’m sure it’s as much a hamster wheel for them. They have to edit it. They have to do all the colour corrections and the promotions and all of the stuff like that. It’s all just a whole series of systemised tasks. And I do it and my team, which is James and Simon and Laura, they do it as well because it’s an important part of our business’ presence out there. And the same thing happens with your MSP’s marketing. If you’re doing it properly, there’s going to be a rhythm to it. You’re doing the same types of content every day or every week, the same channels, the same cadence week, after week, after week. And after a while, you might start thinking, “Oh my goodness, am I just repeating myself here? Am I just saying the same things again and again?” And the answer is probably yes. And that’s a good sign because here’s the thing that most MSP owners forget. You see your marketing every day… your prospects do not see it every day. You’re inside the system, they’re only catching glimpses of what you put out. So if you do think about it from their point of view, a prospect might see one LinkedIn post from you this month, or maybe they read one blog on your website or they hear an episode of your podcast if you do that because someone recommended it to them. They are seeing a tiny, tiny slice of what you produce. Meanwhile, you’re seeing everything… every post, every email, every article, every video. So of course, to you it feels repetitive because you’re experiencing the whole system, but your prospects are not. And even if they do see your content more than once, it’s usually spread out to them over time. So they might see something today and then they might not see anything from you for another two weeks. And then by the time they see the next thing, the first one has already kind of faded from their memory. Marketing doesn’t land through a single perfect message, it lands through repetition and familiarity. And through seeing the same themes appear again and again from someone who clearly believes what they’re saying, that’s how trust is formed and built. So when your marketing starts to feel repetitive to you, don’t panic. Don’t assume you need to reinvent everything. In fact, please don’t. In most cases, this means that the system is working. The real challenge for you is not avoiding repetition, the real challenge for you is keeping it fresh for the person consuming it, because you can talk about the same ideas but in different ways. You can use different examples, tell different stories, or even apply the same principle to different situations. The core message stays exactly the same, it’s just the wrapper around that message that changes. And that way, it still feels interesting for the person randomly encountering it when it’s out there, even if you talked about the same underlying idea 20 times already. I mean, I’ve done that so many times with this podcast. I’ve talked about marketing systems, about social proof, about positioning, about vertical markets. I don’t know, maybe dozens, maybe 20, 30 times by now. The ideas and the themes repeat because those are the themes and ideas that work. But what changes is the stories that I tell, the angle with which I come in to tell that story, the specific examples I give you, or the things that I’ve noticed recently. And remember this as well, the moment your marketing starts to feel a little repetitive, perhaps even a little dull to you, that’s often the moment that it starts working properly on your leads and your prospects because dull usually means consistent. It means the system is running and it’s working. It means you’re showing up again and again and again in front of the people that you most want to reach. And from their point of view, that presence does not feel dull at all. It feels reliable, familiar, and like you’re the person who is always there talking about these big ideas. So if your marketing feels repetitive to you, it’s not a warning sign, don’t change anything. It’s often evidence that you’re doing it right. One final thought on this, which actually is one of the most common questions I get from new members to my MSP Marketing Edge membership. They very often ask, “Paul, what kind of cadence should we be putting out content?” And it seems like a relevant thing to bolt on to the end of this discussion. So I think you can actually break this down into daily, weekly, and monthly tasks. On a daily basis, so seven days a week, you should post something on social media, on LinkedIn. And that shouldn’t just be text posts, there are many different formats that you can use. So things like text, obviously images, videos, infographics, and PDF carousels. Those five on LinkedIn are wonderful. And you don’t actually have to load on a daily basis, you can load a whole month’s worth of posts in one go using Publer or Growably, which you can get free from The Tech Tribe, but you should definitely post at least one post a day, seven days a week. So next up we have weekly tasks, and this is where the bulk of your MSP’s marketing cadence should sit. So every week you should post a new blog on your website, ideally with a related video. In fact, a video and a blog about the same subject is a very powerful way to put content in front of people in the way that they most want to consume it. Then you should send a LinkedIn newsletter out once a week. You should also update your Google Business profile once a week, and you should send an email to your email list once a week. There we go, five tasks that you repeat on a weekly basis. But again, you can actually load them monthly so you can load all of your weekly tasks once every single month. Then we get onto the actual tasks that you only do once a month, the monthly tasks. And I think it’s healthy once a month to send out a printed newsletter to your Dream 100. They are the top 100 prospects in your list that you most want to work with. You could also send out a marketing campaign, which may consist of a physical postcard that you mail out to people with some email follow-ups to send out to them and a telesales script, a telemarketing script that you use to call people after you’ve sent them out this postcard and these follow-up emails. Don’t just send this out to everyone on your list. You might send it out in small batches, 50 people a week is a great thing. I realise that’s not a monthly cadence, but you have a new campaign every month and you send it out in bunches of 50 a week. Most people can follow up 50 prospects a week. And that’s the key to this, if you’re going to do this campaign, send out the postcard, send out the emails, but you must follow it up by phone. The postcard and the emails create an opportunity for someone to make an outbound call on behalf of your MSP to follow these people up by phone. There’s a lot there, but this would be the perfect cadence if you could achieve that for your MSP, the daily tasks, the weekly tasks, and the monthly tasks. And not at all coincidentally, that’s the exact cadence that we deliver within my MSP Marketing Edge membership. So if you just want to achieve all of this marketing happening for your MSP really easily, you can go and see if it’s available in your area. Go to mspmarketingedge.com/membership. What margins should you aim for? And how to increase them? Let’s now talk about two things that quietly make a massive difference to the profitability of your MSP. You’ve got margins and you’ve got simplifying your billing. Yeah, I know neither of these sound particularly exciting, but if you get them right, they can have a dramatic impact on how much money your business actually keeps at the end of every month. I did a bit of research before recording this. I got my AI friend to look at some reports from MSP industry analysts and some finance blogs that track managed service providers. And the general consensus is that a healthy MSP should be targeting somewhere around 20 – 30% net profit margin. Of course some businesses manage more than that, some less, and it’ll vary by market and the type of work you do, but 20 – 30% is widely considered a solid target for a well-run MSP. Now, when you hear a number like that, the immediate reaction for many MSP owners is either relief or panic. Relief, obviously, if you’re already there or above 30%, and if you are give yourself a high five, but panic if you’re nowhere near it. Margins are often less about big dramatic price rises and more about fixing small leaks in the revenue bucket. One of the biggest leaks I see is hardware. Many MSPs treat hardware as a pass-through cost. The client buys a laptop or a firewall or whatever, they buy it through the MSP and you as an MSP add a tiny margin, maybe 10% or 15% because you’re worried that the client will just go and buy it somewhere else. And that thinking is understandable, but it creates a very strange situation because if you look at it, you’re sourcing the equipment, you’re ordering it, you’re dealing with the supplier, you’re handling delivery. I guess there’s an insurance complication in there as well. You’re often installing it, you’re configuring it as well, and yet you’re barely making anything from this. If you’re going to handle that entire process, there should be some real margin in that, right? In fact, I would argue that hardware sold through an MSP should often carry a margin closer to 40, maybe even 50% in some cases, depending of course on the product and the market. And before you panic about that number, remember something important. The client who wants to shop around for hardware will always shop around. Those clients who just insist on getting their own stuff from Amazon, they’re never, ever going to buy from you, but the clients who value convenience and advice and a single point of responsibility and someone else just doing it for them, they will always buy through you. They are not comparing the exact price of a firewall on Amazon to what you’re quoting. They’re just paying for the outcome. They’re paying for simplicity. And there’s another easy lever here as well. If you didn’t want to put that extra margin on the actual device, charge a setup fee. If you supply, I don’t know, like a laptop, charge them for the configuration. If you supply a firewall, charge them for the installation and the configuration. If you deploy a new server for them, charge them for the project work. Because that setup work, it’s real labour and real expertise. And I know that the big picture is we’ve got to protect the monthly recurring revenue, but charging properly for those little mini projects you do, because that’s what hardware is, it’s a mini project, charging properly for it increases your margin without touching your recurring prices. And they’re a lot more sensitive to their monthly recurring revenue prices going up than they are the one-off project prices. Here’s one more idea. What about if instead of selling the hardware outright, you supply it as a service. In fact, I know a few MSPs who do this, they do router as a service, or even a SNAS, a secure network as a service. And this is where you pay for the hardware, which of course you can pay that off within a couple of months, but then you rent it essentially, or you lease it to your client. So you’re getting recurring revenue at a very high margin from your clients. And actually, you think if you buy something that you pay off in two, three months, but they keep that as a service for the next 36 months, that’s some pretty good margin in that. The second thing that I want to talk about is simplifying billing, because complexity and billing really eats up time and money inside an MSP. And I know so many MSPs who’ve systemised everything in their business, well a) except the marketing and b) except the billing because they always have to sit down and say, “Oh, hang on, this person did this and we’ve got this unusual case and this unique exception.” But all of these, every tiny little customisation for every client, it just adds friction. I heard a great example recently of how one MSP has really simplified one element of their billing. So instead of billing devices individually, he allocates two devices per user to every single client. And he knows from his data that the average usage across his client base is actually 1.3 devices per user, but rather than track every laptop and desktop and tablets and phone individually, he just simply builds two devices per user per client. And that means the pricing is simple, invoices are simple. So on some clients, he’ll make a little bit of extra margin because they may only use one device per user. And then on others, he loses a little bit of margin because there might be the odd user that’s got three devices, but overall it balances out and the simplicity saves time and administrative overhead. And that’s the key idea here. Perfect accuracy is not always the goal, sustainable profitability is. A billing model that’s easy to understand, explain and administer is often far more valuable than one that tries to calculate every last penny precisely. So when you combine better margins on hardware with simpler billing structures, you start to remove some of the hidden friction that sat in your business. Less time arguing over invoices and chasing tiny margins and more predictable profitability. And that ultimately is what allows an MSP to grow without feeling like it’s constantly working harder just to stand still. By the way, I would love to know your ideas on this, the little things you do that add these little extra bits of margin here and there. We have a Facebook group that’s just for MSPs to talk about marketing and business growth, and you are welcome to join… as long as you’re not a vendor, because it is a vendor-free zone. Go to Facebook, search for MSP Marketing, go to groups, and you’ll see my lovely face. Smack me in the face with your finger, and I’ll see you in the group. Members’ Update If you’re a member…

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These 4 things will mend your MSP's website Apr 27, 2026

Show notes

Your website is having conversations on your behalf because that’s its job… it’s there to explain who you are, what you do, and why someone should trust you. The question is, what’s it saying? Also this week, why most MSP reporting to clients is ignored, and huge mistakes you’ll make today that’ll damage your exit. Welcome to Episode 337 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge. What your MSP’s website is secretly saying to prospects behind your back Your MSP’s website is talking behind your back. So the only question is, what’s it saying? While you’re out at dinner, walking the dog, in a meeting, or even having a sneaky kip at three in the afternoon, yeah, I know what you get up to. Your website is having conversations on your behalf because that’s its job, right? It’s there to explain who you are, what you do, and why someone should trust you. The problem is that for a lot of MSPs, your website is having the entire conversation with the prospect, because if they don’t very quickly find something on there that engages them and makes them think, “Oh, right. Yeah, this is the right place for me,” then they just move on. They go back to Google or AI or however they got to your website in the first place, and they go looking at other MSPs. And do you know what? You never even know that they were there because you don’t know their name, you don’t know what they were looking for. All you know is that another invisible conversation just died. So what is your website saying behind your back? From what I see, most MSP websites accidentally deliver one of four damaging messages… The first message is this: We don’t really want to tell you much about us. You see this everywhere in kind of vague written content, which of course we call copy. You see generic service descriptions or a homepage that says almost nothing specific or uses very generic text like proactive IT support, trusted partner, cyber security solutions. And here’s my favourite. We keep your business running. Now, there’s nothing technically wrong with those phrases until you realise that every other MSP within like a 25 mile radius is using the exact same words or the same intentions at least. And when everything sounds the same, you sound the same as all of your competitors. And when everyone sounds the same like that, the prospect has no reason to choose you. So the silent message becomes, we don’t really know what makes us different, so we’re going to hide behind safe language. And prospects really feel that. If you don’t give them something distinctive that they can hook onto, then they will go looking for someone else who does. The second damaging message is: Lack of transparency. Many MSP websites avoid talking about price. They avoid explaining how their services work. And they avoid spelling out what’s included and what isn’t included. Instead, everything funnels towards contact us to find out more. So put yourself in the buyer’s shoes. They’re already nervous about switching MSP and they don’t want mystery, they want clarity. If your website withholds really basic information like pricing, then the message it sends is that they have to speak to a salesperson before they can even decide whether you are relevant to them or not. And in 2026, that just kills momentum. Buyers want to research quietly. They want to understand what you do, roughly how you price and how you think before they ever talk to you. And your website either supports that research or it blocks it. As a side note, if you know that’s a problem and you want an easy way to fix it, I’ve partnered with bestselling author Marcus Sheridan to create msppriceguide.com. You can get an interactive price calculator on your website that not only has transparency about pricing, but actually it also acts as an insanely good lead generation tool. Go to msppriceguide.com. The third damaging message is: There are no real humans here. You’ve got stock photos, very polished, but bland language, no real opinions, no stories, no sense of personality. Essentially, there’s no proof that you’ve ever helped anyone like them, like the person who’s reading your website. And the result is that you feel like every other faceless IT company. Buyers these days are asking themselves very simple questions. Who are the people behind this MSP? Would I enjoy working with them? Do they care? Do they have an opinion? Do they have a point of view? In an age where AI can generate endless, generic content, it’s humanity that really stands out. And that means real photos, real voices, real stories, written and crafted by humans. So if your website feels sterile, you’re missing a massive opportunity to build connection before the first conversation. And then the fourth and most damaging message is: Lack of social proof. No case studies, no reviews, no testimonials. There are no client stories on your website. Now, you know that you’re excellent, but if there’s no evidence on your website, then the message becomes we say we’re great, but you’ll have to take our word for it. And when someone’s considering switching from one MSP to another, that is a big decision. Humans trust other humans more than they trust marketing claims. So proof reduces perceived risk for them. Without it, doubt creeps in. The good news is this is all fixable. Go through your homepage, your About Us page and your key service pages and ask yourself a few honest questions. Is this specific or could it belong to any MSP? Are we open about how we work and what things cost, at least in principle? Do real humans show up here with personality and perspective? And is there clear proof that we’ve helped businesses like the one reading this? Your website doesn’t need to be perfect, but it does need to be clear and transparent and feel human. And of course it needs to prove what you claim because whether you like it or not, it is having conversations about you every single day and night. And the better those conversations are, the more likely the prospect is to book into your live calendar and start a real conversation with you. Why most MSP reporting to clients is ignored… and the smartest fix This one is going to be relevant to you if you do any kind of reporting for your clients. Perhaps you have clients that insist on having regular reports and updates on their tech setup, but you sometimes get that sneaky feeling that they never actually read it, which probably drives you crazy right. Side note on this, once I worked for a big, big radio company and we had to do a big report at the end of each week to go off to our boss, I had that feeling that my boss wasn’t reading the report. So I started inserting random sentences and even swear words in the middle of that report and he never ever mentioned it. So I just sort of made it up from that point on. If he’s not reading it, there’s no point spending time on it. Anyway, side note over. I know that if you’re doing these reports, it is work for you. Even if you’re just generating a report from your PSA, you probably just double check it, just read it through, right? And just like it was for me back when I worked in radio, anytime you’re doing some work that you don’t think actually adds value, it creates frustration and makes you not want to do the work. I believe the problem here is not the information that you’re generating, but the format in which you’re sending it. Let me explain that. If you think of the average report that you might produce for your clients, it’s probably just pages and pages of data, right? Charts and metrics and ticket volumes and analysis of response times and security alerts, maybe even their backup status, all of that kind of stuff. And again, I know all of this is in your PSA, but you press a button, you turn it into a PDF and you send it through to the client and maybe most of the time you hear nothing back. In fact, maybe you’ve even tracked whether or not they even open the email and maybe they don’t. Maybe they pass it onto colleagues if it’s a bigger business or lodge it somewhere. But if you really are getting that feeling that no one’s reading it and absorbing it, then here is a better way of doing this. Now, by the way, this bit of the podcast was inspired by Jason Morales, who’s one of the MSPs I work with inside the MSP Marketing Edge. He does something so much smarter. This is his idea, which I’ve happily stolen because it’s a great idea. Instead of forcing clients to consume information in the format that suits him, he presents the data in the format that they’re already consuming. In other words, Jason adapts the delivery to the specific client, and that small shift is so powerful because here’s the thing, the data on its own doesn’t drive retention… understanding the data drives retention. So if your client doesn’t even look at the report you’re sending them, they can’t absorb the information, so it won’t affect their behaviour or strengthen your relationship. It’s just a bit of admin for you and a bit of admin they ignore for them. So what does it look like in practice to deliver it in a different format? Well, one really good example is to turn reporting data into audio. If you think about it, many business owners already consume content via podcasts. So instead of sending a 10 page report, you send them a 10 minute private audio summary. You could say something like, “Hi Mr or Mrs Client. Here’s what’s happened this month. Here’s what you need to know and here’s what we’re watching. And also at the end, there’s some recommendations that I’ve put. There’s only a couple of them, but I think they’ll make a big difference to you.” And suddenly, even though that’s taken 10, 20 minutes of your time to read that and produce that report, it suddenly feels really personal and human. And they are going to consume a 10 minute audio file from you way more than they are some kind of PDF. You could record that yourself or you could use an AI to do a summary of it. You could get the AI to voice it if you wanted. I personally would use the AI to do the summary of the report from your PSA and then you record that. They’re much more likely to listen if it’s your voice and not an AI voice. And I know that you can clone your voice with AI these days but I really don’t think you want to go down that route. I know 11 labs and a couple of other services do it but I really don’t think you should go down that route. As long as you hear my voice in a podcast or a video, as long as I’m alive, it’s the real me. I really don’t believe in cloned voices. Maybe the technology in the future will be so, so good you can’t tell, but today you can kind of tell. Anyway, rant over. Another format, of course, is short video. You could record a 5 minute Loom or a Teams video where you just talk them through the highlights. The beauty of doing it as a video, not an audio, is you can show one or two key charts up on the screen and you can explain what matters and ignore what doesn’t. Most people will watch a 5 minute video. I think maybe audio is slightly better because they’ll probably listen to it in the car, but at least with the video, they’ll see your face, they’ll hear your voice. And again, that increases trust. I guess you could just ask each client, “Would you like a short video on this or would you like a short audio file on this?” As I’m thinking about this, I’m thinking you could also turn data into a simple infographic. So instead of overwhelming them with lots of printed numbers, highlight the three metrics that matter the most. So this could be, I don’t know, your uptime percentage or the number of threats blocked, or maybe even the number of tickets resolved within your SLA. Again, it depends on what’s most important to your client or what stands out most to you that you want to shout about. But as an infographic, it’s a visual thing. It’s very simple, it’s very obvious. It shows where the good news is and it shows them what needs attention. Business owners and managers love clarity, don’t they? You must see this in the dealings that you have with them. So another approach is to turn reporting into a short written narrative instead of a massive 10 page report. This could literally be a one page story of the month and you write it as a story. You don’t just do it as a list of facts. You tell them what went well, what nearly went wrong, but you intervened, what you’ve improved, and what you’re going to be working on next. Humans are wired right at the core of our brains to engage with stories far more than facts and tables of data. In fact, you could even adapt this based on the client’s personality because some will want detail and some will want summary. Some want dashboards, some want conversation. The point is you don’t default to the format that’s easiest for you and you just bang out the reporting once a month. You choose the format that’s easiest and most pleasant for them. Because the goal of reporting is not to prove that you’ve been busy. The goal of reporting is to demonstrate value in a way that strengthens the relationship. So why not ask them? Ask them what kind of format they consume. Offer them choices. For example, if I was your client, I’m not really a super heavy detail person. I just want a quick overview and I want to know that everything’s okay. But I do also love audio books and podcasts. So I would actually love a 5 or 10 minute audio report that I could listen to once a week, once a month, whatever. That would be absolutely perfect for me. When clients actually consume and understand your reporting, a number of things are going to happen. They’re going to appreciate what you prevent, not just what you fix. They’re much more likely to approve upgrades and investments. They’re less likely to question invoices because they know you’re doing stuff and they’re far more likely to renew at the end of their contract without hesitation. So this kind of really engaging reporting, it’s not compliance. It’s more like insight, building the partnership between you and them. I love it. Such a great idea, Jason. Thank you so much for the idea. So maybe it’s time to ask yourself a very simple question. If you were your client, how would you prefer to consume this? Members’ Update If you’re a member of the MSP Marketing Edge, have you joined me yet at one of my drop-in marketing clinics? I do these normally every Tuesday and Thursday. It’s just a 30 minute group Zoom where you can literally drop in, just say hi to me, chat to me about your business, or ask a specific marketing question. Now, this isn’t designed as somewhere for you to come and lurk and listen to what other people are talking about. It’s very much if you’ve got an active question or you just want to talk to me about a specific subject. You can see when the next clinic is and also what time it is in your time zone. Just go into the portal and head to the support page. Oh, and if you’re not yet a member of the MSP Marketing Edge, we do only work with one MSP per area. You can check to see if your area is available. Go to mspmarketingedge.com/membership and enter your postcode or zip code. MSPs: Huge mistakes you’ll make today that’ll damage your exit Featured guest: Adam Borst helps business owners grow through acquisition and helps founders exit the right way. He sources opportunities, structures the deal, and quarterbacks the process through closing, creating a streamlined, high-certainty transaction for both buyer and seller. There’s going to come a day when you’re going to exit your business. In fact, they’re either going to carry you out in a box, which is not really the exit you want, or better still, you’re going to sell your business. Now, if that’s years and years and years away, it’s still something that you need to be aware of now. In fact, I believe it needs to be sat in the back of your mind all the time, almost asking yourself, “The decisions I make toda…

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Should your MSP fire your most annoying client? Apr 20, 2026

Show notes

Should your MSP fire a client? It’s a question almost no one asks aloud, but a lot of MSP owners think about it privately… this is what you need to know. Also this week, analogies to help any prospect understand complex tech issues, and how this guy generated 1,000 highly qualified leads for MSPs. Welcome to Episode 336 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge. Should your MSP fire your most annoying client? A big question… Should your MSP fire a client? It’s a question almost no one asks aloud, but a lot of MSP owners think about it privately. Now, you know the client I mean, right? The one whose name pops up and your stomach tightens slightly. The one who, when they ring, your team kind of looks around quietly hoping someone else answers the phone or more likely they look down at their desk hoping they don’t make eye contact with someone. I mean the client who drains more energy than they generate. And you know that name that’s in your head right now, if you’ve had that name negatively floating around in your head or in meetings or in discussions more than once over the last few weeks or months, then what I’ve got to say here is worth paying attention to. Every so often in business, perhaps if you just take a few days off or if you have a bit of space to think about things strategically, you get this amazing rare combination of perspective and momentum, the two going together. Perspective because you can step back and see the bigger picture to how the last 12 months have really felt and momentum because you’re thinking about growth and direction and what the next stage of your MSP’s growth looks like. And when you zoom out like that, the handful of difficult clients, they really stand out very, very clearly. The noisy one, the energy vampire, the one who questions every single line on every invoice, the one who is permanently unhappy, the one who doesn’t treat your team with respect. And you find yourself thinking, “Am I really going to put up with this for another 6, 12, 18 months?” And then the doubt creeps in. You tell yourself, “Oh, hang on here. I’m trying to grow the business. Firing your client is going backwards.” No, that’s completely the wrong way to think about it because here’s something that most MSPs don’t realise until they’ve done it… Your worst client often costs you more than they actually pay you. Now sometimes yes, that cost is financial, but it’s always emotional, mental, and operational. A single difficult client can completely demoralise your team. They can drain all the time from your senior technicians and from senior management. They can create chaos in your calendar and slow down work that you’re doing for good clients. Bad clients can even contribute to staff churn, I’ve seen it happen, and they can absolutely destroy your personal mood or the mood of your team with a single ticket. Why would you continue to tolerate that? The opportunity cost of keeping the wrong client is huge. So how do you spot one clearly? To me, there are four big red flags: First, is when your team groans, when their name appears on caller ID. That is the biggest warning sign of all. If your people feel dread and are just avoiding the call, something is very wrong there. Second, they argue over everything – quotes, invoices, priorities, response times. Every time anyone speaks to them, any kind of interaction, it just feels like a negotiation, which is not a partnership, is it? That’s just pain. Third, they expect champagne service on a lemonade budget. I love that line. They want premium response and premium outcomes, but when you explain what that costs, suddenly you’re too expensive. Fourth, they don’t follow your processes. They won’t log tickets properly. They won’t approve upgrades. They won’t invest in their own security. Maybe they even phone you on your personal mobile in the evenings. But despite all of this, when something breaks, it’s still your fault. If a client consistently refuses to work with you, they’ll always feel like they’re working against you. So let me ask again, “Is someone’s name very clearly in your head at this point?”, then let’s talk about how to handle that properly. First of all, change the language in your own mind. You’re not really firing them. You’re helping them to find a provider who is a better fit for how they want to operate. I mean, that mindset shift alone changes your tone immediately. This conversation should be done with them on the phone, it should be professional, it should be calm. Thank them genuinely for their business and just explain that your business, your MSP is moving in a slightly different direction and you no longer feel like that the fit is right between you and them. Give them formal notice, of course, confirm it in writing and do recommend another provider who may suit them better. And then it goes without saying that you should work properly to transition them without any kind of drama. So done right, they won’t be thrilled, of course they won’t because they’re already probably a negative person or negative people, but they will respect how you’ve handled this. Done badly, there’s always that danger that they’ll leave a review that leads like a horror story or just talk badly about you to other businesses. But here’s the bigger point, growth is not just about adding new clients and growth for the sake of it, that’s very rarely a smart idea. Growth is also about protecting your culture, your energy, and your direction. The right clients energise your team, they respect your process, and they trust your advice. And of course, they make your business better. But the wrong clients do exactly the opposite. So if you’re serious about building an MSP that’s profitable, stable, and enjoyable to run, sometimes deleting a client is the smartest move you can make. Analogies to help any prospect understand complex tech issues Surely one of the biggest frustrations for any MSP is trying to explain something complex to a prospect and watching their eyes kind of glaze over halfway through the sentence. You understand the tech, but they don’t. And that’s not a criticism, it’s just a reality. Most ordinary business owners and managers don’t want to understand the technical detail, but of course, they do want to understand the impact and the outcomes. So right now, I’m going to give you three analogies that you can use to make complex tech issues instantly make sense. And then after that, I’m going to share a whole blast of extra ideas that came out of a conversation inside my MSP marketing Facebook group, because there are some brilliant ideas in there. So let’s start with the first and most common analogy… computers and cars. And this is a classic, isn’t it? Because it just works. Most business owners can drive a car. Some of them could do small fixes or tweaks to their car. At the very least, most people can swap a tyre, right? But yet they still get it serviced. They still rely on a professional mechanic for preventative maintenance. And when something serious goes wrong with their car, they don’t personally strip the engine out. They don’t take it out and strip it down to pieces, do they? They call a specialist for this. So IT can be positioned as exactly the same. And yes, a user can reboot a PC and maybe even reinstall a printer, but that doesn’t mean that they should be responsible for patching or security backups or monitoring or recovery planning. And here’s the key point. If you don’t service a car properly, it doesn’t always fail immediately, but as we know, the problem builds quietly until one day, just when you need it the most, you’re stranded. And that’s what unmanaged IT looks like. So framing managed services as a servicing plan for the most critical asset in their business suddenly makes it kind of obvious rather than optional. The second analogy you can use is the smoke alarm or smoke detector. And this is brilliant for explaining monitoring and cyber security, because a smoke alarm doesn’t stop fires or eliminate risk, it just detects danger early enough for you to act. Monitoring tools and security alerts and suspicious login notifications, they’re kind of like digital smoke alarms. You don’t wait until the building is on fire to install a smoke alarm. You install it because early warning massively reduces damage, and that one lands really quickly with most prospects. And then the third analogy is insurance. No sensible business owner cancels their insurance just because they didn’t make a claim last year. They understand it’s there to protect against catastrophic risk. Backups, disaster recovery, layered cyber security, all of those things and more are insurance for the digital side of their business. And just like with insurance, you don’t want to discover the gaps when you’re mid-crisis, you want to know in advance that you’re covered properly. Do those three make sense to you? Can you see that they would be a useful way for you to explain difficult tech stuff to people using concepts they already understand? It’s important you know this is not about talking down to people, this is actually you physically dropping down to their level to explain stuff in a way that they understand. It’s very powerful. Now, let me give you some other ideas. A few months back, I asked inside my MSP marketing Facebook group what analogies people there use, and there were some absolute gems. And by the way, if you’re not in that group, it’s completely free and it’s a vendor-free zone as well. Just go onto Facebook, search for MSP marketing and have a look at groups. We’re normally the top result in that, you’ll see my pretty face on there and that’s how you’ll know you’ll find the right one. So Gerard in that group who’s a prolific contributor, he talked about how a professional builder doesn’t give his team hobby tools, DIY tools to do serious work, which is perfect for explaining why business grade IT matters. Alan used the Lamborghini analogy. You wouldn’t buy an expensive performance car and then skip servicing it because eventually the repair bill will be eyewatering. Jason compared slow internet to drinking through a thin straw versus a wide one. That is such a simple way to explain bandwidth. He also mentioned comparing monitoring to a SWAT team ready at the first sign of smoke. I love that one. Then Neville, who’s also been a prolific contributor over the years, Neville used the seatbelt and airbags comparison. You can have all the safety features in the world, but if someone drives straight into a brick wall, there are limits to what those safety features can do. That’s very powerful when explaining user behaviour and security risk. Ed mentioned roads, traffic lights, and roundabouts, very useful for explaining how systems need structure and flow to prevent chaos. And someone even compared pricing transparency to walking into a car dealership and asking how much a car is. And of course the answer is it depends on what model you want, what spec you want, etc, etc. In fact, this ties beautifully into conversations about IT pricing. The point of throwing all these ideas at you is that there isn’t one perfect analogy. It’s that analogies cut through complexity. They help prospects move from confusion to clarity in seconds because when someone says to you, “Oh yes, I get that.” What they’re really saying is, “I trust that you understand this better than I do.” And that’s the moment the sales conversation shifts. So instead of trying to impress prospects with technical depth because that never works, try translating complexity into something familiar. Cars, insurance, smoke alarms, straws, seat belts, and tools. Because the MSP who can simplify complexity will always win against the MSP who hides behind technical jargon. Members’ Update If you’re a member of the MSP Marketing Edge, I hope that you’re using our content calendar, which we released at the beginning of this year. It allows you to see what content to publish and when, it’s all just there on the screen in front of you. And it also shows you what cadence we recommend that you publish content. If you’re using our done for you service, then you can see when your content will be published for you. If I do say so, it’s a lovely and easy to use visual tool, and you’ll find it in the navigation on the left, just look for the words “content calendar”. Now, if you’re not yet a member of the MSP Marketing Edge, we do only work with one MSP per area, and you can check to see if your area is free. Just go to mspmarketingedge.com/membership and enter your postcode or your zip code. How this guy generated 1,000 highly qualified leads for MSPs Featured guest: Michael Bakaic spent the first 6 years of his entrepreneurial journey being a tech guy that hated sales. He even argued against paying a sales person commission. That led to burning through $4M and hitting rock bottom. Now he’s paying back that debt by showing MSP founders how to sell without feeling salesy. Sales is about solving people’s problems in exchange for money. When you have the right mindset and systems, your tech brain will love sales because you’ll be solving people’s problems. If you’ve ever paid to exhibit your MSP at an event, and you’ve walked away thinking, “Well, that was a waste of time and money,” then you’re going to love my special guest. He’s on track to attend a hundred events helping MSPs just like you, and he’s generated somewhere in the region of 1000 highly qualified leads for those MSPs. Highly qualified means that they’re nearly ready or they are indeed ready to have a serious conversation right now about potentially switching from their existing MSP over to someone new. I’m going to ask him right now to lay out the system he uses to achieve that so you can swipe it and adapt it for your MSP. Hello everyone. My name is Michael Bakaic and I’m trying to learn the fastest from the front lines by doing the most number of MSP lead gen events ever. Yes. In fact, you are without a doubt the hardest working person in the MSP marketing space, because am I right in saying that at this point right now, you’ve done 99 lead generation events with MSPs that you work with over the last 12 months alone. Is that the correct figure? We’re cranking up that’s 2025 in the calendar year I did 47. And whenever this comes out, we’re cruising past that because I’m going to do a hundred all in 2026. So you better get this out quick or else it’s going to be way past 99. It is. And what’s really cool, and this is what we’re here to talk about, is doing those events, you’re not doing those events just for fun, you’re doing those events to help to generate highly qualified, ready to have a sales conversation, leads for the MSPs that you work with. And just give us the big figure. So out of those hundred events, how many qualified, and we’ll go back and talk about what a qualified lead or ready to buy lead is, but how many qualified ready to buy leads do you reckon you have helped MSPs to generate just in the last 12 months? This is where the rubber hits the road in writing stuff down and I’m getting better at that. So the first few events I wasn’t taking enough notes. I would say reasonably 5 to 10 engaged leads per event, whether it’s a trade show booth or a golf course booth. 5 to 10 is a reasonable expectation that you should set for yourself and that I have accomplished for each of these events. So you multiply that by 100, we’re talking 500 to 1,000 engaged. There’s a reasonable level of engagement and recon collected, not just a stranger that you said hi to. Yes, and this is why you are the hardest working man in the MSP marketing space. You’re also the guy with the most frequent flyer points, because I know that you are doing some serious flying to do this. Everyone jokes about that, but I don’t collect any points because United does not give away points for the cheapest tickets that t…

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How To Attract Buyers To Your MSP’s Website Apr 13, 2026

Show notes

Here are seven ways you can drive more qualified traffic to your MSP’s website… not vanity visitors or random clicks, but people who are genuinely more likely to start a sales conversation with you. Also this week, reasons to add a price estimator to your MSP’s website, and what to do if your referrals have dried up. Welcome to Episode 335 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge. How to drive tons more qualified traffic to your MSP’s website If you woke up tomorrow and your MSP’s website had received double its normal traffic, would that actually change your business? For most MSPs, the honest answer to this is no because… Your marketing problem isn’t traffic, it’s qualified traffic… the right people, from the right businesses. So right now, I’m going to give you seven levers that you can pull to drive significantly more qualified traffic to your MSP’s website. We’re not talking vanity visitors or random clicks, but people who are genuinely more likely to start a sales conversation with you. Lever #1: Clarity beat volume. The clearer you are about who you want to attract, the easier it is to create content that pulls them in. If you try to speak to everyone, you’ll attract no one. But when you specialise, even if it’s just in your messaging, you become magnetic to a specific group. And that’s why vertical marketing works so well. When an accountant (CPA) lands on a page that clearly talks about accountants or a manufacturer sees content that reflects their world of production lines and deadlines, they instantly feel understood. Understood… that’s the keyword there because that recognition is what drives qualified traffic. Lever #2: Relevance over randomness. Most MSP websites are full of really generic service pages about IT support and cyber security and backup and cloud, and that content really doesn’t attract qualified buyers because it doesn’t answer specific real world questions. Instead, think about what your ideal prospect is typing into Google or their AI tool late at night when they’re worried about their business. They type in things like “What happens if our server fails?” or “How do we pass a cyber insurance audit?” or “What does downtime actually cost a manufacturer?” So when you create content that calmly answers those questions, you attract people who are already thinking about solving a problem that they believe that they have. It’s because you’re talking about them and their issues and not you. That’s a real key thing in website content. Leaver #3: Consistency. Because traffic compounds over time. One blog post won’t move the needle at all, but 50 might. 100 definitely will. 500 absolutely will. When you publish regularly, weekly blogs, weekly videos, daily LinkedIn posts that link back to your website, you just create more entry points and you stay more visible. You build familiarity. Qualified traffic rarely comes from a single piece of content. It comes from repeated exposure over time. The trick for most MSPs is to put in place a system whereby you have content going out on a regular basis, and that system does it 52 weeks a year with minimal impact on you as the business owner. And as a side note, if you want a system that puts content out there, go and have a look at my MSP Marketing Edge membership. It’s a system that we’ve designed and it’s trusted by hundreds and hundreds of other MSPs as a way of them getting content out every single day with minimal amount of work for them. Go to mspmarketingedge.com. Lever #4: Distribution. Creating content is only half the job. You need to deliberately put it in front of the right people, and that means emailing it to your database, sharing it consistently on LinkedIn, even sending out printed newsletters in the mail. Content that just sits quietly on your website won’t drive traffic in of itself. Content that’s strategically distributed will drive content. Lever #5: Social proof embedded into your content. Qualified prospects don’t just want information, they want reassurance. When your website includes reviews, testimonials and case studies from businesses like them, visitors are much more likely to stay, explore, and trust what they’re reading. And that doesn’t just increase traffic, it improves the quality of it. Trust is everything in your marketing. Lever #6: Cornerstone content. Instead of publishing dozens of thin posts, create deeper guides that genuinely help people. A proper comprehensive guide on, let’s say, IT for law firms or cyber security for manufacturers, that becomes something worth sharing. So it keeps visitors on your site for longer and positions you as an authority and becomes an asset that you can reuse in multiple places. It’s really cool stuff like that. Lever #7: Referrals done properly. One of the simplest ways to drive highly qualified traffic is to make your website so clear and useful that your existing clients feel confident sending people there. When your messaging clearly states who you help and how you help them, your website becomes a tool and your clients can use that tool on your behalf. There is a certain social risk that people take when they refer you, because if the person they refer has a bad experience with you, that makes them feel bad. So the very first step is to just have a good look at your website. If it’s clear and simple, that’s going to give your clients confidence to refer you. But if it’s generic and boring and complicated, it’s the exact opposite. That kind of traffic, referrals, is as qualified as it gets. So in summary, if you want tons more qualified traffic, don’t chase numbers. Pull those seven levers that create alignment. Alignment between who you want to work with, what they care about, and what you actually publish both on your website and out there around the web. When that alignment is strong, traffic stops being random and starts becoming predictable. And you know what? Predictable qualified traffic is what’s going to help you grow your MSP. 21 reasons to add a price estimator to your MSP’s website There’s a marketing idea that absolutely freaks out a load of MSPs. And the funny thing is that the businesses that embrace it properly often see their lead generation jump up dramatically. I’m talking about putting a price estimator on your website. That’s a smart tool, which lets prospects get a rough idea of what IT support might cost before they ever speak to you. And I can almost hear the objections already, “It’ll scare prospects away… What we do is too complex for that… Our competitors will see our prices…” and these are the same reactions that I hear again and again and again. But here’s the thing. When you approach this the right way… A price estimator doesn’t scare away good prospects. It actually attracts them, builds trust and completely changes the dynamic of your sales conversations. So let’s just step back for a second and look at buyer psychology. Buyers hate mystery. Hidden pricing creates anxiety for them and anxious buyers or anxious prospects don’t convert into buyers. Transparency on the other hand builds trust immediately. When someone can get just a rough idea of cost without jumping through hoops, that signals maturity, confidence, and that you’re not hiding anything. And that alone differentiates you from most of the rest of the channel. There is some powerful psychological forces at play here. First, price anchoring. When prospects see a structured price range, they recalibrate what normal looks like. Second, pre-acceptance. If someone’s already seen and accepted the ballpark figure before they speak to you, you remove most of the awkwardness from the first conversation. And third, autonomy. Modern buyers want to explore privately. It’s not 2008 anymore. Whether they’re using AI or doing their own research, people don’t want to have to talk to sales during the early research stages. They want clarity first, and the price estimator gives them exactly that. So let me give you some very practical reasons why this works so well. It eliminates tyre kickers because people with tiny budgets disqualify themselves. It attracts better prospects because serious buyers lean into clarity. It reduces price objections because they’ve already accepted the range before you ever speak. It speeds up the sales cycle because you move from curious to ready much faster. It filters your pipeline so it feels calmer and more predictable. It increases engagement on your website because people interact with the tool instead of just browsing. It gives you valuable data about what prospects choose, what they avoid, and what price brackets are most common. And it makes your future content stronger because you’ll start to see patterns in what buyers actually care about. There’s also something else going on here. When a prospect customises their own solution, such as choosing the number of users, the service levels, add-ons like backup, they become emotionally invested. They’ve built it. And when buyers build something themselves, they’re far more likely to want it. That’s really powerful. So what does this actually look like? Well, it’s simple. It’s a clear tool on your website where prospects pick the number of users, they choose a service level, they select any extras, and they instantly get a rough idea of pricing. And rough is the key word. This isn’t a fixed quote, it’s guidance, just framing education, if you like. And here’s an important practical detail. Before you give them the rough pricing, you ask for their name and their email address for them to see the full breakdown. Now, that alone can become one of the best lead generators on your website. And if they give you their phone number as well, you call them immediately. And I’m serious, immediately. Not in 10 minutes, not tomorrow. Now, the second you get the notification they filled in the form. Because someone who’s just completed a pricing estimator and volunteered their phone number is not browsing, they are ready. Now, let me ask you something… If you were an ordinary business owner switching your IT support, would you contact a company if you had no idea what it might cost? Would you happily book a call with zero context? I mean, I wouldn’t. And if you wouldn’t, then your prospects probably wouldn’t either. Transparency isn’t scary. I can see why it seems scary, but it’s not. It’s powerful. And in a world where buyers expect clarity and speed, adding a price estimator to your website might just be one of the smartest marketing decisions that you can make. And hey, just in case I can make this easy for you, I’ve partnered with bestselling author, Marcus Sheridan, to create a price estimator just for MSPs. Go and have a look at msppriceguide.com. Members’ Update If you’re a member of my MSP Marketing Edge membership, you now have access to May’s content. We released new content on the 10th of every month, so last Friday, May’s content appeared magically in the portal. It’s there in the content section and also in the content calendar, which shows you what to publish and when. If you’re not yet a member of the MSP Marketing Edge, we only work with one per area so you can check to see if your area is free or if a competitor has locked it. Just go to mspmarketingedge.com/membership and enter your postcode or zip code. What to do if your referrals have dried up Featured guest: Sara Nay is the CEO of Duct Tape Marketing, where she helps small businesses turn marketing strategy into scalable systems their teams can actually execute. Since 2010, she’s worked with thousands of business owners and fractional CMOs, blending big-picture strategy with scalable operations. A passionate trainer at heart, Sara’s mission is to empower others to lead from their zone of genius and build marketing teams that can actually get the work done. Sara is also the author of Unchained: Breaking Free of Broken Marketing Models, with the mission to help small businesses take back ownership of their marketing, instead of renting it. Here’s a common scenario for MSPs, and it’s a killer. You’ve been in business for a few years, and you’ve mostly grown through referrals. You didn’t actively solicit them, they just kind of turned up as a result of your great work, your care for your clients, and the sheer energy that you’ve brought to your business. But then one day you realise it’s been some time since you had a referral, and you start to realise that the referrals have stopped. You get a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach because you realise that you have no other consistent marketing that’s happening. If you’re in that situation, you can relax. It happens to almost every MSP. And my special guest right now is going to tell you where to get started with your marketing in this exact scenario. Hello, I’m Sarah Nay, and I’m the CEO of Duct Tape Marketing. And it’s so exciting to get you here on the show, Sara, because Duct Tape Marketing, which is both a book and an agency which has been around for many, many years, was one of the very first marketing books I ever read. It’s still available now on Amazon. I guess it’s on Audible as well. Most books are these days. And we were just saying before the interview, somewhere in my house, I have my original copy of this from like 20, 25 years ago. It’s probably falling apart at the seams because I read it again and again and again when I was just getting started about 20 years ago. So cool to have you here on the show. Tell us a little bit more about Duct Tape Marketing and how long it’s been running and what your story is within that business. Of course. So we’ve been in business for about 30 years. We’ve always had specific target markets. We’ve always worked directly with small businesses where we come in as more of a fractional CMO. So we outline a marketing strategy for the business and then we go into a long-term retainer where we’re serving as their marketing leadership, essentially. And we also certify and train marketing consultants, fractional CMOs and agencies in our approach as well. But absolutely everything that we do is based on strategy before tactics. And that was a core theme in John’s book over 20 years ago. And so we’re still holding true to that line. And I would even argue that it’s more important now in marketing with the age of AI. And so my role at Duck Tape Marketing, I started as an intern about 16 years ago. I’ve had pretty much every role within the company over the last 16 years. And last December, I stepped into the CEO seat, so I’m about a year and a couple months into the CEO role. Amazing. Congratulations. And I mean, 16 years in one company in itself is amazing. And to rise from intern up to being the CEO is fantastic. You’ve written a book yourself. So obviously there’s John’s book, Duct Tape Marketing from 20-odd years ago. What’s the name of your book that you’ve written? Mine’s called Unchained: Breaking Free from Broken Marketing Models. And so that came out last year. Really the emphasis of the book is there’s a lot that’s broken and wrong in the marketing agency space today. And so I believe that small businesses really should be able to take ownership of their marketing. They should own the systems and the tools and the content that’s created. And so the emphasis of the book is really about taking ownership of what you’re doing and that marketing should be an incredible asset in the business that you own. Yeah, I agree with you completely. There’s a few good agencies out there and there’s a lot of rotten agencies out there, and that’s the same in the MSP space as it is, I guess, in the whole world. So what we’re going to talk about today is we’re going to paint a real world scenario for a typical MSP, and then we’re going to look at what you would advise that MSP to do in this scenario. So very often I start conversations with MSPs who’ve either listened to the podcast or followed on YouTube or LinkedIn or how…

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Turn Your MSP's Existing Clients Into Lead Magnets Apr 06, 2026

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Learn how to collect social proof obsessively and build it into your marketing to attract new clients. Also this week, why every MSP needs a dispatcher, and how to get vendors to pay for your marketing. Welcome to Episode 334 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge. The one marketing habit every MSP should obsess over If there’s one marketing habit that I wish every MSP would build into their regular rhythm, it’s this. Collect social proof. And not casually, I mean obsessively because nothing builds trust faster than a client telling the world that they’re genuinely happy with you. You can talk about your service all day long, but the moment someone else says, “These people are amazing,” the whole dynamic changes. So let’s talk about why social proof works, the three types that every MSP should be collecting and how to do it in a way that never ever feels awkward or forced. To understand why social proof is so powerful, you need to look at a bit of basic human psychology. Back when humans were still figuring out fire and trying not to get eaten by dinosaurs, survival depended on sticking with the group. If the herd ran, you ran. And that instinct is still baked very deep within our brains and our gut reactions. Even though we like to think of ourselves as rational, independent, modern decision makers… People are still heavily influenced at an emotional level by what other people are doing. That’s why testimonials, reviews and case studies work so well. They quietly say, “Hey, people just like you trust a business like this and that feels safe.” So as I said, there are three types of social proof that every MSP should be collecting, and the first is reviews. Reviews are the most powerful form of social proof because they live on third party platforms that you don’t control. So places like Google. They’re public, they’re credible, and that makes them so much harder to fake. And that’s also why if you have to prioritise, I’d always prioritise reviews over collecting testimonials. A simple and very effective tactic is to ask a client to leave you a Google review and then reuse that review in your own marketing. So you get it on the third party platform, but you use it in your own website. So you could screenshot it and include it in proposals or as I say, your site or social posts or even better than screenshotting it. Get your website designer or any designer to recreate the review so that it looks consistent across different screen sizes while keeping the exact wording that you’d see on Google Reviews. And there are, just out of interest, three great moments when you should ask for a review. During the first 90 days of working together, when everything still feels fresh and positive, just after you’ve completed a big project successfully or right after you’ve saved them from something serious. The only real rule for this is don’t ask for reviews if you’re in the middle of any kind of difficult conversation with your client, which sounds obvious, but you’d be surprised how many people forget or they don’t realise that there’s a bit of conflict going off at the same time, we’ve sent them an email asking for a Google review. So that’s reviews. The second type of social proof is testimonials. And testimonials are like a review except you have control over them. That’s what makes them different. So they come directly to you. And that might be as a quote or a video clip or an email that you’ve asked permission to reuse. And because you control them, they’re easy to polish and deploy across all of your marketing. And yes, they do work, but they don’t carry the same weight as a public review because everyone knows that you could have edited them. That said, one strong video testimonial, especially from a well-known local business or a business that’s well known in your vertical, that can be absolute gold. And then the third and final type of social proof is case studies. So if reviews are the match, case studies are the bonfire. A simple case study is simply a story that wraps social proof into a narrative and our brains love stories because they feel more real, they’re more believable and more memorable. The structure that makes case studies work is simple. First, you demonstrate relevance by showing that this client looks just like your ideal prospect. Then you describe the problem from the client’s point of view and not a technical one at all. Then you poke the pain a little by explaining what that problem costs them or how it felt. You introduce the solution by explaining what you did. Again, don’t drown it in tech. And then finally, you show the happy ending by demonstrating how the client was able to move forward successfully because of your help. And you can see why video works brilliantly here. Even a quick Teams recording can be enough, although it would be better to hire a proper videographer to film your client in real life. 20 to 30 minutes of footage gives you tons of videos that you can use across multiple platforms. And once you’ve got that, you can repurpose it into written content, LinkedIn clips, and website copy. One good case study can fuel your marketing for years, because of course, most ordinary business owners and managers are only looking for an MSP once every five years or so. So they’re simply not seeing your case study more than once. And if you were to collect a new case study every couple of months, you can see why I say this should be a habit because you genuinely cannot have too much social proof. So here’s a simple challenge for you this week. Go and get one new piece of social proof, just one. Ask one client for a review or record a 60-second testimonial over Teams, or even write up your first proper case study using that structure. You’ve already done the hard work of delighting your clients. Now, let those clients help you prove it and attract even more of the right ones. Why every MSP needs a dispatcher At some point, every MSP reaches a stage where the biggest challenge is no longer technology. It’s actually customer experience. Tickets are getting logged, work’s getting done, but clients and the users working for the clients, they don’t always feel heard or acknowledged, or there’s a risk that they don’t feel looked after. And that’s usually the moment that an MSP realises they don’t just have a service desk problem. They actually have a customer service gap. And that’s why I believe every MSP needs to hire a dispatcher. And yes, a dispatcher brings operational benefits and we’ll talk about those in a second but the real magic of this role, I believe, is what it does for the client experience. A dispatcher’s primary job is not fixing issues. It’s making sure that every single person who reaches out feels seen, heard, and acknowledged. They want to feel that someone’s taken responsibility that they’re not just shouting into the void. Imagine that you’re one of your clients or one of the people that work for your clients, and you submit a ticket and it’s a kind of annoying problem. It’s not a major problem, but it’s something you’d really hope to get fixed in a few hours or so because it’s just annoying you. And in most MSPs, you submit that request and you might get an auto response, but then you might not hear anything for a few hours, or you might get a bit of a message back, but it’s just like a random update. It doesn’t really tell you anything. Whereas when you’ve got a dispatcher in that exact same scenario, every single ticket that gets submitted, the dispatcher phones that person. They literally pick up the phone and they call them and they acknowledge the problem, they perhaps ask a couple of follow-up questions if necessary, and they empathise with the user. They’ll say to them, they could use these exact words, “This is a really annoying problem, isn’t it? So what I’m going to do, I’m going to get one of our senior technicians onto this straightaway and I hope to have an update for you in the next hour or so.” And what the dispatcher has actually just done is they’ve bought your technicians some time to really look into that problem while also keeping the customer happy. This is great, right? From a customer’s point of view, that matters far more than whether or not the ticket is resolved in five minutes or 55 minutes. When users know that there’s a calm, organised, pleasant human being at the other end who understands what’s going on, their anxiety just drops immediately. And you know, reassurance is a massive part of good IT support, isn’t it? You must have learned that so many times over your career. So let’s take a moment to just make sure that you and I understand exactly what I mean by a dispatcher. A dispatcher is the person who sits between the clients and the technicians, and their job is to make sure that every user feels heard and nothing ever gets lost, while ensuring that the technicians always know exactly what to work on next. So from an internal point of view, a dispatcher typically works alongside the service desk manager, and they’re not replacing that role at all. They’re very much supporting it. They help to route tickets efficiently, making sure the right work goes to the right technician and that priorities are set properly instead of emotionally. Now that alone massively improves flow and maximises technician time, because instead of technicians constantly checking queues and answering phones and responding to interruptions or trying to decide what do I work on next, what’s the priority. They can just focus on actually resolving things. And here’s the important commercial point. A dispatcher usually costs significantly less than a technician. So by hiring a dispatcher, often you’ll free up enough technician capacity that you can delay or maybe even completely avoid having to hire another tech, which is another big win. But again, the real benefit shows up in how your clients feel. Every user gets acknowledged quickly and they know what’s happening next. They’re kept informed if there’s an unexpected delay and they’re never left wondering whether anyone has even seen their tech support request. Over time, that builds trust and patience and dramatically reduces their frustration even when things go wrong. One of the biggest mistakes MSPs make is assuming that the dispatcher has to be technical. They do not. In fact, some of the best dispatchers come from outside IT altogether. Just think about people who already thrive in fast-paced customer facing environments, perhaps someone who’s run a local coffee shop or a hotel receptionist or someone who’s fronting a car service department. These are people who are really good at juggling priorities and managing expectations and staying calm under pressure. Oh, and communicating clearly and smiling while they do it. They know how to deal with people when they’re stressed, impatient, or frustrated. Well, that’s IT support, right? You can teach basic IT and systems people. You can teach processes, but it’s almost impossible to teach someone empathy, organisation, and great communication skills. I know these things can be developed, but it’s easier to bring someone in who’s got all of those things and teach them a bit of IT. And a great dispatcher brings all of those things to your MSP. Empathy, organisation, great communication skills. Wouldn’t it be cool to have someone who is the friendly, consistent face of your service desk, someone that clients recognise and trust… everything gets easier. Technicians are protected, workflows better, and the clients feel better looked after. And do you know what? As a side effect of this, your MSP starts to feel more professional, more controlled, and more scalable, both to you, your technicians, and your clients. I genuinely believe that a dispatcher is not just overhead, they’re leverage. When you get this role right and you get the person right that’s in that role, the improvement in customer service alone more than justifies the decision. How to get vendors to pay for your marketing Featured guest: Laura Johns has spent the last 20 years promoting some of the most impactful technology solutions across the globe. Today, she lead The Business Growers, a fast-growing marketing firm focused on building predictable revenue engines for MSPs, IT service providers, and telecommunications companies. The Business Growers provide full-service, done-for-you marketing support to clients in more than 20 states, bringing deep industry expertise and a clear focus on results. They help MSPs and IT leaders increase monthly recurring revenue, improve retention, and win more long-term managed contracts. Could you imagine getting vendors to pay for your MSP’s marketing? Well, you don’t need to imagine it. It’s real, and it happens every day to MSPs across the world. There’s hundreds of millions of dollars available in something called MDF, marketing development funds, and yet very few MSPs are using it to subsidise their marketing. My special guest today runs a fast growing MSP marketing agency, and she knows the good, the bad, and the ugly about MDF. So if you want to subsidise your marketing, here right now, are the answers. Hi I’m Laura Johns, founder and CEO of the Business Growers, a marketing operations and lead generation company that serves managed services providers. It’s so cool to have you on the podcast finally, Laura. You and I met in real life for the first time at ScaleCon in New Orleans last year, which you’ve just told me that you only live a couple of hours away from. And we were on the naughty table with Nate Freedman and Cassie from TechProMarket. Marketing was there as well. And I remember Nate kept whooping and hollering and throwing comments out. It was such fun, such fun. I hope it happens again this year. So it was lovely to meet you and what I want to get you on the show talking about today is I know is one of your specialist subjects, which is MDF, marketing development funds. And it’s something we haven’t actually mentioned in the podcast for a number of years, which is crazy because I know that there are tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars sat in vendor’s bank accounts, which should actually be in MSP’s bank accounts. So before we talk about that, do you want to just tell us a little bit about you? So what’s your kind of journey within the MSP world and how did you get to where you are now? Sure, yes. I think that I can officially say I’m the only tech focused marketing agency in the state of Mississippi. Although we do have a lot of budding tech companies that have come up in the last decade or so, we are not necessarily known for our technology, so I’m really proud of that. I’m from the deep south, I’ve always been in technology, started my career working for a telecommunications company that was embedding cellular technology inside of an electric metre. So monitoring electricity through cellular, which was really progressive. That was my first job out of college, did graduate school, continued to work there for 10 years, which this day and age I hear is unheard of when you start a new career to stay somewhere for 10 years, but I loved it. And it was that startup and that culture of startup was really, really a cool experience for me. And then that company actually sold for a $100 million in 2014. And once they sold, I went to work for the parent company that was a metre manufacturing company in Washington. Then after that, went to work for a managed services provider, so stayed kind of in the industry and led marketing for them. And really this MDF was a big part of my story even then. So at the time, the company I worked for was an AT&T reseller. They were reselling connectivity and other things through AT&T. And they were starting a program for partners that allowed them to get upwards of 10 to $15,000 a quarter based off of how much they were selling. And we were a very small, a…

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How To Market Your MSP To Manufacturers Mar 30, 2026

Show notes

Let’s look at how to market your MSP to manufacturers and whether this vertical is even right for you. Also this week, good/better/best pricing for MSPs, and how this 40 technician strong MSP wins clients. Welcome to Episode 333 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge. How to market your MSP to manufacturers Do you want more manufacturer clients for your MSP? Manufacturers are one of those love it or hate it verticals in the channel. Some MSPs absolutely thrive working with manufacturers. Others hear the word and breakout in a cold sweat. And honestly, both reactions are completely valid. So right now, I want to do a proper, balanced, deep dive into how to market your MSP to manufacturers, starting with whether this vertical is even right for you, and then looking at what manufacturers actually care about when they choose an MSP. So let’s start with the reality. If you enjoy complexity, manufacturers can be a fantastic fit. They often have expensive production machines, specialist software, bespoke setups, and critical systems that simply cannot go down. And yes, somewhere in most factories, there’s usually a machine still running on an old XP box that hasn’t been rebooted for 10 years because if it stops, the whole place stops. That’s the joke I always make, but it’s funny because it’s true. The upside of this is obvious. There are lots of large, complicated, high revenue projects. There’s specialist work that you can charge properly for. There’s a real value in what you do because downtime costs manufacturers serious money. When production stops, it’s not a few annoyed users. It’s lost output, missed deadlines, idle staff, and very stressed owners. That makes manufacturers willing to invest when the risk is clearly explained. But let’s be honest about the downside. Manufacturers rarely have standard setups. There’s very little cookie cutter IT. Every environment is different. Every site has its own quirks. And that means that often you need your most senior technical people involved a lot more often than you would in a nice tidy professional services business. If your MSP is built around highly standardised stacks, minimum variation, and keeping senior techs away from day-to-day firefighting, then manufacturers will feel like chaos to you. Before you even think about marketing to manufacturers, you need to answer a simple question internally… do you enjoy this kind of work? Assuming you do want to go after manufacturers, the next mistake MSPs make is marketing to them like they’re any other business, because they are not. Manufacturers think differently. Their world revolves around production, reliability, safety and efficiency. They don’t care about shiny tools or buzzwords. They care about one thing above all else – keeping the production line running. From their point of view, the best MSP is not the most innovative or the most cutting edge, it’s the one that feels the safest. The one that understands their environment, the one that won’t casually suggest upgrades that risk stopping production. So when you market to manufacturers, your messaging needs to shift. You’re not selling IT support, you’re selling risk reduction. You’re selling uptime, stability, you’re selling calm. Manufacturers choose MSPs who demonstrate that they understand the consequences of failure. Talk about downtime in terms they understand… lost output, missed delivery slots, idle machines, wasted labour. Show that you respect legacy systems, even if you don’t love them and that you know how to work around them safely. One of the most powerful things you can do in your marketing is to talk about how you approach change. Manufacturers are often change averse for very good reasons. So explain how you test, how you plan, how you schedule work outside production hours, and how you build rollback plans. That builds trust fast. Case studies are especially important here. Manufacturers want proof, real examples. Stories of similar environments, similar risks, and similar complexity. So even if you only have one manufacturing client, that case study will do more heavy lifting than 10 general testimonials. You should also lean into onsite presence a lot more than you might in other verticals. Manufacturers value MSPs who show up and walk the floor and understand the physical environment as well as the digital one. So talking about site visits, audits, and physical awareness during your marketing and your sales process immediately differentiates you from MSPs who just kind of want to be very much remote based. And finally, remember that manufacturers don’t choose MSPs emotionally in the same way say as creative or professional services businesses do. Their decision is grounded in risk, responsibility, and consequence. So your marketing should reflect that tone. Be calm, be reassuring, be very competent. There’s no hype needed. There’s no drama. You need to show that you understand their world, you respect their constraints, and you can keep the machines running safely. If you can do this, you will stand out very quickly. Marketing to manufacturers, you know, it’s not about being flashy. It’s all about being credible. And for the right MSP, that can be an extremely profitable place to be. Good, better, best pricing for MSPs: Why it works Why is good, better, best pricing so controversial for MSPs? I hear MSPs say things like it’s too complex or it adds noise to an already long sales process, or maybe even just prospects will get confused. And I think that focuses far too much on a small number of perceived downsides while completely missing the much bigger upside. Because when good, better, best pricing, also known as three-tier pricing, when it’s done properly, it doesn’t complicate the sale at all. It actually guides it and helps prospects to make a decision. And it shifts the conversation away from whether they should buy from you and towards which option that you offer is right for them. Does that make sense? So let’s break this down properly. First, what do we actually mean by good, better, best? Well, at its simplest, you already have a bundle of services that you sell. With three-tier pricing, you still have that bundle. You just offer it in three different flavours. So the good package is the essentials. What they genuinely need to keep things running. The better package builds on that with perhaps more protection, more resilience, more support, and the best package is exactly that. It’s everything you offer at the highest level for the businesses that are more risk averse, more regulated, or just want the most comprehensive offering that they can get. Now, if it helps you to visualise this, you might label them something like bronze, silver, and gold. Bronze being essential protection, silver the business grade resilience and of course the most popular choice, that’s what you want it to be, more on that in a second, and gold being the premium protection plus strategy for businesses that want that highest, highest level. And that most popular label I just mentioned in the middle, that’s not an accident. In fact, a common and very effective approach is to place the package that you most want to sell in the middle. And that way, prospects can compare it. They can see something cheaper that offers less and something more expensive that offers more. And this allows them to feel like they are choosing the option that fits them best rather than being pushed into something. And that feeling, that sense of control is a critical part of buyer psychology. You’ll know you’ve got good, better, best pricing, broadly right when around about three quarters of your new sales, your new clients land in the middle package. Now, let’s talk about why this works from a psychological point of view, but without getting academic. A huge amount of buying behaviour is driven by how we feel, not just what makes logical sense on paper. And there are three psychological principles quietly doing a lot of heavy lifting here. The first is something called price anchoring. The top package sets a reference point, which makes the other options feel more affordable by comparison. The second is the compromise effect. Most people naturally avoid extremes, so when presented with three options they tend to gravitate towards the middle one because that feels safer and it feels more reasonable, especially when it’s labeled as the most popular choice. And the third is something called choice architecture, which sounds like it’s out of the matrix. But actually, instead of asking prospects to design a solution from scratch, which is stressful and overwhelming for them, you’re giving them a small number of clearly defined options that align with different risk tolerances and different budgets. And the combined effect of putting these three together, that is so powerful. Price sensitive buyers are no longer scared off because there’s a sensible entry level option. Buyers who want more protection or faster response have a clear upgrade path. And crucially, the sales conversation becomes about which package to choose, not deciding whether or not to buy from you. That is a very different conversation to be in. Now, when it comes to structuring the three tiers themselves, and these are not prescriptions, they’re just starting points. Every MSP’s tech stack and service model is, of course, highly different. But as a general guide, a good or bronze package might include things like remote help desk during business hours, monitoring and patching, a baseline AV or EDR, basic backups such as Microsoft 365, and of course a standard response SLA, or maybe even no SLA at all. The better or silver package would include everything I’ve just talked about in bronze, plus you might throw in onsite visits or maybe out of hours support. You might throw in full server and workstation backup with tested recovery. There might be email security, phishing defence in there, maybe even priority response, definitely an annual strategic review, because that’s a great long-term retention tool. And then the best or the gold package would include everything we just talked about in bronze and silver, plus 24/7 response, advanced security monitoring such as SOC or MDR, virtual CIO, definitely strategic planning with roadmaps and budgeting, and of course, if they need it, compliance reporting that’s relevant to your client’s sector. So when it’s all structured this way, three-tier pricing isn’t about confusing prospects or padding invoices. It’s all about clarity. It’s about guiding decisions and it’s about meeting buyers where they are in terms of risk, responsibility, and expectation. When you do it right, good, better, best pricing makes it easier for them to buy. And that’s why it works so well for lots of MSPs. How this 40 technician strong MSP wins clients Featured guest: Dorota Ulkowska draws on her extensive Managed Services background—including leadership roles at Shing Digital—to guide her work as Director of Client Success at Accurate Network Services. She blends process improvement with genuine client care, ensuring technology drives growth rather than creating friction. Dorota believes IT should be approachable and practical, helping organisations adapt to change with confidence. With a people-first style, she focuses on aligning solutions with business goals, building trust, and making technology an empowering force for clients. MSPs, we are rolling up our sleeves right now to get into the specific marketing that one of the fastest growing MSPs in Canada is using today. I’ve managed to persuade their director of client services to tell me what they’re doing to win new clients, turn prospects into sales appointments and sell more to their existing clients. Now, they’ve got 40 technicians and they’ve been going for 19 years. So this is a solid business and you’re about to hear some very solid marketing strategies and tactics from my special guest. My name is Dorota Ulkowska. I am the director of client services for Accurate Networks. And thank you so much for joining us on the show. I am delighted to have you here because you are there in the trenches. You’re leading the marketing for your MSP, I know you’re doing lots of marketing. You’re very good at the strategy and implementing the tactics for your specific MSP. In the next 10, 15 minutes or so, we’re going to get right into what exactly is working for you guys right now and also what’s some of the stuff that you’ve tried that doesn’t work. And I know this is going to be one of those, roll your sleeves up. Let’s actually get our hands dirty episodes, which we absolutely love here on the podcast. So before we go any further on this, just give us some context. So tell us a little bit about Accurate Networks, whereabouts you are, give us an idea of how big you are and how long have you been with the business? So Accurate Networks has been around for about 19 years and the head office is in Edmonton, we also have an office in Calgary and I actually have not been with Accurate for very long. I’ve been here for only five months and I’m just loving the environment, I’m loving the direction and just learning absolutely a ton. Our organisation is a managed services provider, which a lot of the people listening are in that group, but MSP is all we do. So if an organisation just wants to do an individual small project, we’re probably not a fit. We will be a fit if you’re also looking for a managed services provider. We do it all, but we really focus on managing our clients overall. And the reason why I bring this up is it is one of the differentiators from a lot of organisations because we actually do say no to potential clients when they are not a fit, which in my personal experience is quite unique. Oh, I agree. Just to give us some context, how many technicians do you have in the business? That gives us an idea of size. Yeah, we have over 40 technicians. Okay. So worldwide, regardless of your currency, I think it’s a good way of indicating how big you are. And I agree actually, I think the smaller MSPs, so we’re talking from anything from the one person bands up to you and two or three technicians, even up to that stage, a lot of MSPs find it really hard to say no to any work that comes in through the door. I guess there’s sometimes a minimum user count that people put in. But yeah, especially when you’re trying to grow the business, it feels right to take any work, but you and I know that it is not right to take any work at all. Let’s delve into that. I mean, obviously with 40 technicians, you’re going to have a lot of accounts people, sales people, obviously yourself, other marketing professionals. So that’s a lot of money to pay out every month, that’s a lot of resource. Obviously you’ll have huge amounts of monthly recurring revenue coming in. How do you as a business handle saying no to clients or to prospects in a way that doesn’t offend them? We are very clear upfront what we do well. During initial meetings we interview the client just as much as they interview us. And we set that up, set that expectation up by saying, “Look, we want you to have the right fit for your needs, but also we need to make sure that the clients we work with have the bare minimum of what they need to have in place or are willing to have in place in order for us to support them in the best way possible.” So our process is such that as we onboard clients, we provide them with an outline of the bare minimum critical risks that need to be addressed. And we need to work with clients who are open and willing to jump on those critical risks so that first of all, they’re functioning properly and securely, and we can manage them in a proactive, secure way in order for this relationship to go further. Any clients who are going, “Well, no, I’m going to do my own research, or I’m not going to commit to that, or just take what…

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How MSPs delight clients for FREE Mar 24, 2026

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The best way for MSPs to delight existing clients dosen’t actually cost money… here’s 5 ways to do it. Also this week, how to turn your MSP’s success stories into 3 BIG marketing assets, and what if you sold your MSP to your employees? Welcome to Episode 332 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge. 5 ways to delight your existing clients without spending a penny One of the easiest ways to grow your MSP is also one of the least talked about. And it’s this… delighting the clients you already have. And before your brain jumps to discounts and gifts and free stuff or doing more work for nothing, let me stop you right there. The best ways to delight your existing clients don’t cost money. They cost attention, they cost intention, and they cost you thinking a little bit differently about how clients experience working with you. So let me give you five examples… The first is proactively explaining what’s happening before clients feel the need to ask. So most client frustration isn’t caused by things breaking, it’s caused by uncertainty. To them, silence creates worry and worry creates friction, not good, right? So a simple update that says something like, “Hey, here’s what we’re working on for you right now, or here’s why we’re making this change and what you might notice.” Well, that can completely change how a client feels about you. They stop wondering, stop guessing, and just feel really reassured. And reassurance is hugely underrated in the channel, it really, really is. The second way to delight clients is to remember what matters to them beyond just their IT and their technology. Clients feel delighted when they feel known, not remembered as just an account number or a contract size, but they’re known as a business and especially as people. So referencing things like previous conversations or remembering a big business priority for them or acknowledging a stressful period that they’ve mentioned. None of that costs you money, but it really builds emotional loyalty between you and them. In fact, you can make clients feel like they’re in a very safe pair of hands. The third way to delight clients is to remove small annoyances that they’ve quietly learned to tolerate. Delight really comes from removing friction, not adding features. So give them clearer instructions, remove the need for them to ask follow-up questions, do better handovers, send cleaner emails, make the next steps more obvious for them. When something suddenly feels easier, clients really do notice, and they might not send you a thank you email, but if they feel it, then those feelings really add up over time. The fourth way is to tell your clients what you’ve prevented, not just what you’ve fixed. MSPs are brilliant at quietly stopping bad things from happening, but terrible at talking about it. Clients rarely know what didn’t go wrong because of you. So when you explain the risks that you’ve reduced and the issues that you’ve headed off, the problems that never really became problems, then you reinforce the immense value of what you do. You remind them why they chose you in the first place. The fifth way to delight clients without spending a penny is to make it safe for them to bring you bad news. This one is bigger than it sounds. Clients are delighted when they’re not judged, lectured, or made to feel stupid. You understand that, right? I do. Absolutely. When they feel psychologically safe and it is all about their feelings, they’re going to come to you earlier and not later. They’re going to be more honest and tell you the stupid things that they’ve done, which is good, right? They’re going to be more collaborative. In fact, they’re going to trust you more deeply. That’s exactly what we want from them. That’s the partnership that you want with your clients. The common theme across all five of these is that delight doesn’t come from doing more. It comes from being more intentional. The MSPs who retain clients really well and grow accounts and earn referrals are not the ones constantly piling extras on top. They’re the ones who communicate clearly, remove friction, and show that they care. They help their clients to feel safe. And do you know what the best part is, right? You can start doing every single one of these things immediately without spending a single penny. How to turn your MSP’s success stories into 3 BIG marketing assets Most MSPs completely underestimate how powerful simple client stories are. You know that your team does great work every single week, fixing problems, preventing issues, and saving clients from themselves. But when do you ever stop to tell the rest of the world about the cool stuff that you achieve every day? Rarely? Well, that’s a huge shame because each one of those stories can be turned into three big marketing assets that will help you to build trust, attract new clients, and help your existing clients feel prouder than ever to work with you. Let me explain why stories sell better than almost any other kind of marketing. Back a very long time ago, like 10 years ago back in 2016, when I first started helping MSPs with their marketing, I noticed how many of them struggled to stand out. Their websites all said the same things. They said things like, “We’re proactive. We care about security. We’re your trusted partner.” You know that. You’ve seen all of this before, but none of it cuts through. It didn’t back then and it doesn’t today. So I’d asked the MSP to tell me about a client that they’d recently helped, and that was the point their eyes completely lit up. They’d say things like, “Oh, one of our clients was hit by ransomware, but we had them back up and running the same day.” Or, “We migrated a whole 100 user law firm to the cloud in one weekend.” And those stories were gold because they did what all good marketing should do. They demonstrated proof, not promises. People trust your stories far more than they trust your claims. So let’s talk about what makes stories powerful. The magic ingredient isn’t just the result, it’s the emotions created by the result. A great client story answers questions from their point of view, such as: what was at stake, what did it feel like before you fixed it, how much better is your life now. When your prospect can see themselves in that story, you’ve already won half the marketing battle. Their emotions will want you to look after their business, and emotions are pretty good at influencing the brain. I believe there are three assets hiding in every success story. And once you’ve got a great story, here’s how to make the most of it… Number one, create a written case study. This is the easiest win. A simple one-page story with three sections… the problem your client had, what you did to solve it, and the result and the benefit that they enjoyed. You don’t need marketing fluff, just real details, quotes if possible, and maybe a photo, or if you have to a logo with their permission of course. And this then is perfect for your website, you can put it in proposals and definitely in onboarding packs as well. You need to keep selling in that first 90 days that you’re working with a client. Number two, create a social media post. Take the most dramatic or emotional part of this story and turn it into a post. It might be something like, “When a ransomware attack hit one of our clients at 6pm on a Friday, they thought their weekend was ruined. Here’s how we had them fully operational again by 9pm that night.” It’s very short, it’s very visual, you can understand that, it’s very relatable. Posts like these build credibility faster than anything else that you can do. Number three, create a video story. Now, this is the golden ticket. Grab your phone and record yourself or your client if they’re up for it, telling the story in their own words. It doesn’t need to be highly polished. For this kind of video, authenticity beats high production value every single time. And then you can reuse that clip on your website, on LinkedIn, in email newsletters, even in your proposals. So here’s your challenge… go and find one story, just one. Ask your team, what’s something amazing that we’ve done for a client recently? Ask your clients, what have we done in the last few months that’s impressed you the most? And ask yourself, what was the biggest scare you had recently, but the resolution was a lot easier than you thought. Then write it up, post it, or record it. You’ve already done the hard tech work. Now made that hard work, work hard for you. What if you sold your MSP to your employees? Featured guest: Eric Brotman is Chairman of the Board and Chief Growth Officer of BFG Financial Advisors and Managing Principal of Brotman Consulting Group, LLC. He started in the financial planning industry in 1994 and launched a start-up in 2003 which has grown to over 20 employees and $900,000,000 in assets under management. Eric is the author of three books including the award-winning “Don’t Retire…Graduate!” and hosts a podcast by that same name. You might think this is the craziest idea that you’ve ever heard, but what if you sold your MSP to your employees really slowly over a number of years? In fact, what if that was your exit plan? So instead of selling out to one of the big consolidators or a local competitor or a venture capitalist group, instead you pass it over to your employees, but you do it really slowly. You get the key people to buy into the business and you lock them into your business long before you’re ready to go. Maybe you think that’s a sensible idea, maybe you think it’s a crazy idea, but it’s something that my special guest today is doing. And I’m delighted to welcome him onto the podcast to explain to you why it’s something you should consider. Hi, I’m Eric Brotman. I’m the chairman and chief growth officer of BFG Financial Advisors. And I’m here to educate MSPs on how to get money out of your business and into your personal pockets and do it in a tax-friendly way. Oh, I love that. I mean, that in itself, we could just spend the whole podcast talking about how to get more money out of your business. And just as a heads up, because we do have listeners and viewers all around the world, we’re not going to be talking about specific US or UK tax laws, and no one wants to hear about specific tax regulations. We’re doing big picture items here of how you can get money out. Do you know what, Eric, I think would be cool as well is if we can start to look towards the end of an MSP’s career. And I don’t mean their business, something horrible happening to it. I mean retirement, that happy day when you sell the business, you dance off into the sunset, go and buy a yacht, whatever it is that people do. I think it’d be really cool to talk about how us as business owners, because we’re all business owners here, how can we maximise our business while we’ve got it and how can we maximise our retirement. That’d be really cool to talk about. So thank you for joining us on the show today. Just give us a sort of a brief overview of you. I mean, what is it that makes a man wake up in the morning and think, “Hmm, I want to be a financial advisor.” It was a complete accident. I got into this business over 30 years ago. I was planning to go to law school, I enjoyed estate planning and wealth transfer and thought that was my path and I fell in love with the financial business and the rest is history. So now I’m building an organisation. We’re teaching individuals, business owners, families about financial literacy. I’m writing books and podcasting and doing as much as I can to get the word out that financial independence is attainable and that it’s mostly based on behaviour, not circumstance. So we’re just trying to change the narrative. And for business owners that there are a lot of particulars that we can take advantage of. It’s worth doing. Yeah, no, I completely agree with you. So this year is my 20th anniversary, no 21st anniversary actually as a business owner. And I completely agree with you. I think, and I have a little bit of wealth that I’ve built over those years. I completely agree with you, it’s based on behaviour more than anything else. What are some of the things that you see business owners doing that a) hold themselves back financially, and b) actually promote themselves and build their wealth? Well, the things that hold business owners back a lot of times it’s a scarcity mindset, instead of an abundance mindset. It begins with attitude, and it begins with recognising that even competitors in your space can teach you something. And that we don’t have to necessarily be afraid of other providers or other folks in our space. I also think that there’s a tendency for business owners to reinvest so much in their business that they don’t actually extract assets or wealth from the business and get it into their personal world, which means you’re constantly risking almost every penny to your name on the business being successful in an ongoing way. And businesses come and go, and industries come and go. So it’s really important, just like any corporate executive who owns stock in ABC company, whatever it is, just like they need to diversify away from their own stock, so do business owners. So we have to take some of the fruit of our labour. And of course you’re going to reinvest in the business, you’re going to grow the business, you’re going to market the business, all those things, and that’s important. But you also have to get some money out of the business and into your family’s net worth, or you’re taking an enormous amount of very focused risk. So I would say those are the two big downsides. One is attitude and the other is the behaviour of reinvesting everything and not diversifying. The biggest determinant to creating a business that’s going to monetise and change your life to make you financially independent, is beginning your succession planning very early. And I know that sounds strange because a lot of business owners in our 30s and 40s aren’t thinking about that. I started selling stock in my own company in my 30s. People thought I was nuts, Paul. But now there are eight other owners here. We have a large roster of folks who can’t wait to buy me out. Not that they want me gone, but that they realise that this business will go on beyond my lifetime. And that’s exciting. That’s a legacy. So that feels good emotionally, but it’s also financially, it’s a really smart move at the end of the day because I can sell gradually and that’s good for tax planning. You don’t have to take a huge lump sum and get clobbered no matter what country you’re in. And at the same time, you can set your own course, set your own pace. I don’t feel like I’ll ever be forced out. I have the opportunity to decide how much I want to do, how much do I want to work? I don’t believe in retirement. I know that sounds crazy because I do financial planning. I think retirement’s brutal and no one should do it because I think a lot of people look at retirement as the end of something, but not the beginning of something. I think you’re retired if you’re financially independent enough that you’re working for fun. And that you’re doing something you love that brings you purpose and brings you joy. And yes, it might still make you money, but at the point where you don’t need it to make you money, you’re retired even if you’re busy and even if you’re still labouring in some capacity. Yeah. So much to unpack from everything that you said there. I agree with everything you said. I love the idea of selling little parts of your business as you go through your career. And I own a hundred percent of my business, the MSP Marketing Edge, and I enjoy the power and the control that goes with that because I can do what I want to do. But I’m only 51, so I’m nowhere near finished yet, but I can completely see the power of bringing on people and selling small parts of the business because…

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MSPs: How to get help if you're struggling Mar 17, 2026

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In this podcast special we’ve joined thousands of other podcasters around the world to take part in something called Podcasthon. I’ve chosen a charity called 404 Stress Not Found, that’s aimed at helping MSPs to cope better, and here’s my guest to tell you all about it… Welcome to Episode 331 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge. MSPs: How to get help if you’re struggling Featured guest: Paul Croker is an award-winning Cyber Security person with a rich background in IT that span the years and sectors. In his last corporate role was heading up the IT for a pan-European space company where Paul led the way for the UK entity spanning two sites, managing complex needs of IT for space projects with budgets and an aggressive headcount to take into account too as the business was ramping up. Paul has also setup 404 Stress Not Found CIC. A not for profit looking to tackle the mental health and resilience issues that plague the tech industry. IT and Cyber are impacted as people are burned out, stressed out and not sure which way to turn. They may not know what is happening or be able to spot the signs. 404 Stress Not Found is a safe place, at in person events and via our free online portal, you can connect with others, hangout, or ask for help, listen to others in need, or start your own journey, it’s what you need it to be. Hello and welcome to this special episode of the podcast. This week, we’ve joined together with thousands of other podcasters around the world to take part in something called Podcasthon. We’re giving up this episode to promote a charity of our choice, and you’re going to love the charity that we’ve picked. It’s called 404 Stress Not Found. It’s a new organisation that’s aimed at helping MSPs to cope better. And here’s my special guest to tell you all about it. Hello, I’m the founder of 404 Stress Not Found. My name is Paul Croker. And thanks so much for joining me on the podcast, Paul. You and I have known each other for, it must be 9, 10 years something like that, it’s been a long time. And bizarrely, and what has sort of created this special episode today is I bumped into you and your wife, Gemma, at Barcelona Airport like back in autumn/fall last year. Now we had actually both been to MSP Global, so it’s not like we were just randomly flying into Barcelona, but we had a great chat outside the airport. I was very hungover, I remember that. And you were a bit more bright-eyed and bushy-tailed than I was. I think I just had a coffee as well, which probably helped. Yes, you had. Which is a dangerous thing at two in the afternoon, but there we go. And we started talking about what you’re doing with 404 Stress Not Found, and I realised this is the perfect thing for this special episode. So let’s start right at the beginning. So just first of all, let’s find out about you. Just give us the brief version of your story in terms of the MSP that you run here in the UK. Sure, so I started a company called 18iT about five years ago now or thereabouts, off the back of exiting a pan-European space company, which is all very cool. So when we talk about rocket science, I know what that used to look like. And what we do now over here is very different. But I take those lessons and basically curate them for MSPs and people in the tech space. That’s really cool. And you can actually say it’s not rocket science because that’s what you used to do. And I do use that quote when I talk on stages. Yes. So you should, I would. I mean, I couldn’t even get into a rocket facility, let alone be a rocket scientist, but that’s pretty cool. And you founded this thing called 404 Stress Not Found. So how long has that been in your life? And we’ll explore how you created it. So it’s been a thing rattling around in my head for about a year or so. And actually was born out of an idea I had when I was going around various conferences, obviously I’ve bumped into you at several of those as well, which are great, but they are transactional in terms of ROI, people are talking about tech… we’re not really talking about the squidgy bit, the human element in those conversations and latching onto those things really. So that was the original concept idea was to have something which is focused on the people, getting to know us as individuals, and having a place where we can kind of talk about things. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. So what have you actually created and how does it benefit MSPs? Oh crikey when did it start, beginning of 2025, we ran the first event in Bristol, here in the UK, we ran the second one in Birmingham in the UK, then we went to Brighton, London, and we finished up in Newcastle. And over the course of those events what we did was kind of a voyage of discovery. They mutated slightly, but the essence was the same. We were getting MSPs or people working in the tech sector together, both corporate IT and SME IT. They might be business owners or they might be tech leaders or they might be people on the tools, so to speak. We don’t care about the job titles and the roles because mental health doesn’t either, so neither do we. So we’ve morphed those events as we’ve gone through. My wife came to one in Brighton, which is great to have her there because her background’s in SEND, special education as well and dealing with people with neurodiverse skills at university. She said, Paul, we’ve got these great sessions going on, we’ve got people that are automatically now opening up and kind of bearing a light into some of the challenges that they’ve got. We need to look after those people as well and be able to have them so they’re ready to perform after they leave our event and the following day. So we brought an online platform into play as well. There’s a portal now that people can use for free, the events are free to attend as well because I don’t want barriers to entry with this. And we are running as a not- for-profit organisation with donations and stuff. So we’re looking for companies, organisations that can donate funds to us as well. We’re registered what we call a CIC, a charitable interest company at the moment in the UK, but the plans are to make it into a fully fledged registered charity. I love that. And do you know what, I think everyone at some point has an idea like this, don’t they? I’ve had an idea for a cause rattling through my head for 20 years, but I’ve never acted on it. So genuinely bravo to you for actually not just taking it the next step, but having a goal and a vision. And I know we have loads of vendors that listen to this podcast and watch our YouTube videos. So those vendors, please hands in your pockets and we’ll tell you where to go and find the details of this shortly. And if you can support that, I think that would help Paul with this mission. So you’re helping MSPs with their mental health, and as we stand here early 2026, that’s a perfectly acceptable thing for you and me to talk about in public like this. And yet 10 years ago, maybe even five years ago, it was somewhat less acceptable to talk about, especially within the channel. And yet, as you and I know, and most people listening to this or watching this will know, the channel is absolutely the place where we need to be talking about mental health because it’s predominantly male and it’s predominantly lots of men sitting on their own, in rooms on their own and with all of the issues that that causes. So do you feel that this is the time for an initiative like this or do you feel like it’s almost overdue? It’s definitely overdue. If I’m honest, the people that I’ve spoken to, MSPs, industry experts like yourselves and others have said, Actually, this is really interesting, thank you for starting it and being the tip of the spear. It needs people talking about it. We need people going on stages at events or just raising their hand up saying, “You know what, I’m struggling at the moment with this stuff.” And that’s okay. We seem to think that when we ask people how they’re doing, we’ve got to say how busy we are, how good everything is… business is good, it’s booming, it’s going really well. We’ve got all these busy things going on, all the rest of it. Whereas when I step away or turn away or when I get home, I’ve got my head in my hands because I’ve got other things happening potentially outside of work as well, it’s not just inside of work. It could be family, it could be friends, it could be other things that are muddying the waters. And I have to deal with that and it’s how do I deal with that and all the stuff I’ve got going on in work as well. Yeah, absolutely. And when we talk about mental health and the example you just gave there, if someone that’s perhaps struggling with one area of their life, which maybe not be their work, but obviously it’s going to affect their work because we’re humans and we have feelings and those feelings permeate into everything. Do you see that because we’re talking about it more these days, that people are more likely to say, Oh, actually I’ll go and join something like this. Or conversely, to get involved with something like this and maybe go to one of the events, even though actually things right now for them would be great, but they want to keep things that way and perhaps support other people. It’s a great point you make there, Paul, actually. And I’ve been talking with people who are struggling themselves, so they come to find ways in which they might not have thought about or to share their experiences and see if they can help others. Because as you know, the channel and the industry is very community minded in lots of these places. People that go to events and conferences want to help others and learn themselves and they’re curious. And I think that last part, the curiosity bit really sort of comes to play here as well, because this isn’t just for people who might be struggling or having challenges. What if you’re a manager or a leader of some description, wouldn’t it be great to spot telltale signs in your colleagues or friends or peers who might be struggling or having a challenge at the moment? So by coming along, being engaged in this new community that we’ve set up, people can share those experiences, share those ideas, but also gain some knowledge and experience. I mean, I mentioned earlier, we’ve got the online platform, the second tier on from that, which we’re hoping to bring out in the not too distant future, actually has courses on there as well. So we’re looking to pull in industry experts who are subject matter experts in their own rights, in mental health, in the challenges that this presents, where they can advertise their courses and some of that money will come back into running the charity. So it’s almost like an Amazon marketplace for their stuff, but it’s down to the individual people there to say, Oh, I like that course. I like the way it’s set up or that resonates with me. Let’s explore it. But I think those sort of things are important really. And we want to raise the bar and the education level around it as well. So would you say the challenge for someone who is struggling a little bit, is the challenge kind of recognising that they’re struggling or actually doing something about it? Because we all have up days and down days, don’t we? And that again, is a normal part of being a human. But do you find that sometimes people have down days and down days and down days and they don’t realise that actually that there’s a pattern there and they need to do something about it? I think there’s probably a bit of all of that present really, and it can impact people differently because we’re all wired up differently, we’re all set up slightly differently and have a different lens on the world and how things are. And that’s okay, but I think you have to be that first point to go, Something’s not right. I’m not myself. Whether that’s you saying that or for my personal experience… I went out with some friends who I’ve known for years and years and years and we hadn’t caught up for a while and they’ve said to me, they took me aside each of them, there’s as four of them in total, over the course of the evening and saying, Hey, what’s going on? Is everything alright? Like, really alright? And they don’t normally do that. So I knew something wasn’t quite right when they were asking that. And for me, that was the start of really uncovering, Do you know what, I’ve got some stuff going on which I need to address. And that was the start of my personal journey. So yes, it really starts with, you need to understand yourself that something’s not quite right. You might not have the answers or might not be really wanting to fully explore it, but just to say, Yeah, I’m not my normal self, is always a good starting point. Yeah. And I guess, well let me make this a question rather than an assumption, if you are very much alone, and by that I say, I live on my own, but I have my 15-year-old here, and obviously kids especially teenagers, they know when you’re not quite yourself in the same way you know when they’re not quite theirself, but I don’t live with my partner, we live separately, so I kind of rely on my child weirdly to be the mirror, the reflection of she’ll say, “Wow, you’ve been a real grumpy…” I won’t use the exact words she uses because they’re swear words, but You’ve been a real grumpy *person* all week, and that in itself can be a bit of a, “Oh, have I? I hadn’t realised.” So do you find that people perhaps that don’t live with a partner or don’t have kids or certainly maybe post COVID, six years on, where although perhaps people working for MSPs or within the tech industry who are still working from home and actually going back to the office never happened for whatever reason in their business, and that’s perhaps not been to their detriment because they’re on their own predominantly a lot. I guess it’s this and all of these scenarios, isn’t it? Yes, absolutely. So again, it’s all relevant. There are cases, unfortunately, of people who didn’t cope well during lockdown, and unfortunately they’re not with us. So that’s what we’re trying to avoid. We want to avoid a place where people feel there is no other option for them, there’s no one listening, there’s no one there that they can talk to or share an idea with. Some people, as you said, work on their own, live on their own, and that’s their life, that’s how they want to be in some cases, but not in all cases. But I think sometimes you do need to have somebody there to talk to or to reach out to. So we’re trying to create that safe place, that inclusive space, where we’re not looking at ROIs, we’re not judging people. We’re just here to listen. We’re not medical experts, so we can’t say to you, Oh yeah, this is the problem and that’s what you need to do and here’s some tablets and some… No, no, no, no. We’re a peer-to-peer buddy-buddy system is the way I describe it. We’re that arm around the shoulder listening to you or helping you if and when you need that. Sometimes people will just go, Do you know what, I just want to go and hang out for a bit. That’s fine. Come and do that as well, it’s not like you’ve got to come and bear your soul necessarily. People come to these meetups and get something different from it. There’s an entertaining story, I’ll keep it short, give you the highlighted version. We had two people come to the Birmingham meetup and they’ve known each other for over 25 years. They both came out afterwards at the end of the night and they said, “My goodness, I’ve just learned something new that I didn’t know about that person before.” And they both said it to me separately. So for me, that’s part of the golden nuggets in this, is even though you might know the people or we see people at events or conferences, it’s a different type of place because we’re talking and listening for different things. Yeah, I love this. So I have to ask because we have a very interna…

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Why prospects price shop MSPs (& how to end it forever) Mar 10, 2026

Show notes

Price shopping often doesn’t start with the prospect, it starts with the MSP… find out why. Also this week, why MSPs feel overwhelmed even when things are good, and clever marketing ideas from outside the channel. Welcome to Episode 330 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge. Why prospects price shop MSPs (& how to end it forever) Have you ever had a prospect say no to you because they believed your MSP was just too expensive? Lots of MSPs think that prospects default to price shopping because they’re cheap, difficult, or just not serious buyers. And it’s so easy to blame the economy or your competition or how the market is right now. But here’s the uncomfortable truth… prospects usually aren’t born price shoppers… they’re trained. And more often than not, they’re trained by the MSP itself through marketing and sales behaviour that’s well-intentioned, but hits in the totally wrong way. Let me give you some examples so you can see if you are doing this by accident. I believe the problem of price shopping doesn’t start with the prospect, it starts with the MSP. In fact, it starts with the signals that you send through your marketing and your sales process, often without even realising it. Every interaction either trains a prospect to compare or it trains them to trust. And most MSPs accidentally train comparison, price comparison especially. Let me show you how. One of the biggest ways that MSPs create price shoppers is by leading with services instead of leading with outcomes. So when you talk about monitoring, patching, backups, antivirus, response times and tickets and stuff like that, you’re just listing features and that makes you look identical to every other MSP. And when things look identical, you’re just making it too difficult for the prospect to differentiate you from all the other MSPs. So the only logical way to choose is price from their point of view. You’ve taught the prospect that MSPs are interchangeable, bad, bad, bad. Another big one is quoting too early. MSPs do rush in sometimes to give a price because they want to be helpful or they want to keep momentum or they want to avoid awkward conversations. But when you give a big number before establishing value, context, and fit, you’re effectively saying this decision is mostly about cost. So the prospect does exactly what you’d expect a rational human to do… they shop around. And by the way, that’s not a reason to not have a price estimator on your website. A price estimator that gives them a rough price in seconds is good, but jumping straight from initial conversation to quote, that’s bad. You’ve got to give them a specific quote at the very end of the process when you’ve got to know them and what they’re looking for and their outcomes and whether or not you guys are a good fit. Then there’s the problem of treating every lead the same. If you have the same proposal template, the same pitch, you’re using the same language, it’s the same packages for everyone. If there’s no sense of personalisation, how can it feel relevant to your prospect? There’s no emotional anchor there. And when there’s no emotional anchor, again, price just floats to the top. MSPs also train price shoppers by apologising for their pricing. People say phrases like, “Oh, I know we’re not the cheapest…” or, “Oh, we might be a bit more expensive, but…” why would you do that? ” In fact, the moment that you say that, you have framed price as the objection, you’ve invited the prospect to challenge it, which is crazy. Another subtle one is overexplaining and justifying. When you feel the need to defend your price, line by line, then you kind of signal uncertainty and that encourages comparison. And then there’s websites. So if your website focuses really heavily on your packages, your plans and your prices, but without anchoring value, outcomes or consequences of not doing what you suggest, then again, you’ve just built a comparison tool and not a trust building asset. You’re helping prospects to shop you by price. Here’s the uncomfortable truth, price shoppers are rarely the problem, they are the symptom. They are the result of marketing and sales processes that remove differentiation and replace it with comparison. And the fix isn’t any kind of clever pricing tactics or discounting or handling objections better or something like that. The fix is training prospects differently from their very first touchpoint with you. That means anchoring outcomes before costs. It means talking about risk, disruption, peace of mind, predictability, and the value of sleeping well at night. It means actually slowing down sales conversations instead of rushing to get a quote out and in front of them. It means qualifying them more, making sure that the fit is right. A good fit is more important than speed. It means positioning yourself as a guide, as a trusted expert, and not a vendor. When prospects trust you, they don’t shop you. When they believe that you understand their world, they will never compare you line by line. And when they see you as the safe choice, price becomes secondary. The MSPs who struggle the most with price shoppers are usually the ones trying the hardest to be easy to buy from. And ironically, the MSPs who make buying feel more deliberate, more thoughtful, more slower, more selective. They’re the ones who tend to attract better clients and fewer comparisons. So if prospects are always asking you for price, always shopping around, always disappearing after proposals, don’t ask what’s wrong with them. Ask, “What have I accidentally trained them to do? ” Because once you change the training, the behaviour changes too. Why MSPs feel overwhelmed even when things are good Every MSP, in fact, every business owner walks around with a hassle bucket inside their head. And when that bucket overflows, everything suddenly feels harder than it should. Decisions take longer, small problems feel bigger and even tiny extra demands can tip us over the edge. If you felt that recently, you need to hear what I’ve got to say in the next three minutes. So let me explain what I mean by the hassle bucket, because once you understand this, it does change how you look at work, stress, and leadership. The hassle bucket is simply a measure of how much hassle you can deal with at any one time. And some people seem to have very, very deep buckets. They can take on enormous amounts of pressure before they start to struggle. Other people have shallower buckets and they reach their limit much faster. And here’s the important thing. You’re not born with a fixed bucket. You can deepen it over time. And equally, it can become more shallow sometimes without you even realising. But whenever that bucket overflows, your ability to cope drops dramatically. As business owners, especially in the channel, we tend to have deep hassle buckets. We learned that in the first few years of running a business. In fact, the depth of your bucket is often what separates people who can run a business for decades from those who burn out early. But here’s the catch. Even if your bucket is deep, it’s usually about 80% full most of the time. Just think about everything you’re juggling right now. Cashflow… which when it’s not right can be mentally destructive, staff… which is a bit like having extra children who all look to you for answers, winning new business, keeping existing clients happy, solving problems, making big decisions, and carrying responsibility. If a completely sane person looked at that list, they’d run a mile. And yet you and I, we don’t run a mile, we take it on willingly because the positives outweigh the negatives by a massive margin. We get freedom, flexibility, and personal growth, and the opportunity to build something meaningful, the chance to change your family’s future. All of that makes it worth it. But there are points in the year, often around now actually, as we’re sort of a few months past Christmas, when the hassle bucket gets dangerously close to the top. And I know this. And the reason I wanted to talk about this in this video and on this podcast is because my hassle bucket is right near the brim right now, and it’s completely self-inflicted. Right now, I’ve got too many projects on. I’ve done too much travel. And on top of that, there’s the emotional and the time pressure of accompanying my daughter to a whole load of open days and auditions because she’s working towards going to drama school in September. So normally I’d say my hassle bucket sits at around about 80% full, and I’ve got to be honest right now, it feels like 95% full. So here’s a simple but powerful question for you… how full is your hassle bucket today? In fact, it might be a question that you might ask yourself every single morning because when the bucket overflows, it’s rarely the big things that cause that overflow, it’s the small extra straw that breaks the camel’s back. The answer is not to try and stop more stuff coming into the bucket, that’s unrealistic, the real answer is to install a relief tap further down the bucket. Now, I call this the DOA relief tap, and we usually hear that acronym, DOA, on crime shows, where it means “dead on arrival”. Well, that’s not what we want as business owners. For us, DOA means delegate, outsource, automate. It’s about acknowledging that even though you’re capable, even though you’re very good at what you do, and even though part of you believes that no one can do it as well as you, there are still many things you don’t personally need to do anymore. A great mantra to live by is this… You should only do what only you can do. Let me say that again because it’s so important… You should only do what only you can do. The business owners who thrive for decades are not the ones who try to carry everything themselves. They’re the ones who constantly look at all of the work in front of them and ask, “Who on my team could do this better, quicker, or easier than me? ” Or they ask, “Who could I outsource this to? ” Or they ask, “How can this be automated?” So maybe now is a good time for you to think about your own DOA relief tap. What does it look like? What are the tasks still sitting on your plate that don’t really need to be there anymore? What could you let go of without the business falling apart? Because the goal here is not just to remove hassle, it’s to simplify your life and protect your thinking space. And here’s the important second part. If freeing up time means you’re just tempted to cram more work in, you’ve missed the point. The real prize is working more on the business and less in it. Take a proper lunch, go for a walk, switch off occasionally, give your brain the space it needs to think clearly. I do this whenever my hassle bucket isn’t overflowing and every time I do, I make better decisions. Because when your mind isn’t focused on desperately scooping things out of the top of the bucket, it can focus on the questions that really matter like, How do I win more clients? How do I get them to buy more? And how do I get them to choose to spend more? As the business owner, that’s where your brain does its best work. Clever marketing ideas from outside the channel Featured guest: Kyle Bailey is the founder of Frontburner Marketing, agency offering Local SEO, SEO, AI SEO, sales enablement, and content strategy for Home Service Businesses like Roofers, Remodelers, HVAC, Plumbers, etc… With over 15 years of experience in marketing, sales leadership, and strategic consulting, Kyle has built a reputation for helping businesses transform their online presence into sustainable growth engines. Kyle goes by the nickname “The Home Service Hammer”, and he and his team focus on building sound websites, driving qualified traffic, improving conversion rates, and aligning digital strategies with real revenue outcomes. Every campaign is rooted in data, guided by strategy, and executed with accountability. I recently connected with another marketing expert who really knows his stuff. In fact, the only thing he doesn’t know is the MSP world, but that’s okay because you and I are always looking for new ideas, right? And he’s got a ton of really good ideas that are working for other types of businesses, which we’re going to share with you right now. Oh, just a heads up by the way, in this interview I mention a live event that the author, Chris Voss, was due to be doing in London here in the UK. And about two days after I did this interview, that event was canceled. I’m Kyle Bailey. I own Frontburnermarketing.net, and we specialise in sales training and online marketing for home service businesses. And just from that very description, you might think, What are you doing on Paul’s podcast, because what’s that got to do with MSPs? And we are trying an experiment today. You see, for the last six and a half years or so, almost every single guest we’ve had on has either been from within the channel or they know the channel really, really well. Now, Kyle, you do know the channel and I know you’ve worked with MSPs in the past, but primarily these days, your focus is outside of the channel. And as you say, you work with home service businesses like HVAC, which is air conditioning for those of us that are British and plumbers and builders and all that kind of stuff. And I know you’ll tell us about that in a second. The reason I’ve got you here is because you’ve got great marketing knowledge. And just in the 10 minutes you and I have been talking before this interview, you’ve given me some really cool ideas and I know you’re going to do exactly the same on our interview today. So an expert from outside of the channel giving advice to us here inside the channel, welcome to the show. Just tell us a little bit about your marketing career and what kind of stuff you do now for what kind of businesses. Yeah. So I’ve been in sales and stuff for a long time before 2010. 2010 is when I started my agency. It was right when Facebook began their business page movement. Everybody thought that Facebook was going to replace Google, which has been said many times, and that didn’t happen, but that’s what launched me into the business. And I was almost immediately serving home service businesses. I grew up in the trades. So I always say I’ve been a lumberjack and a framer, but I’ve actually done everything that touches the house. I’ve installed AC, I’ve done roofing, remodeling, the whole nine yards. So I love the trades. And so I love serving them and helping them out. Yeah, and you help them with their marketing. So that’s the websites. It’s the same problems that MSPs have, right? Which is a really good presence, credibility, authority, traffic, leads, all of those kind of things. Right. I deal a lot with folks who have a great IRL, as the kids might say, in real life presence. They do great work, they have great reviews, but then when the customer comes to the website, there’s a letdown because that online presence doesn’t match it. So we primarily are pulling people into the 21st century as far as look and feel the website, the execution of the website, and the content piece is really big because those key points of problem solutions that they offer, that needs to be present on the website early and often. And so that’s what we’re doing most of the time for our folks. I think it’s interesting, you and I, as I’m going to label us, marketing professionals, you and I know that many of the marketing things that MSPs need are exactly the same marketing ingredients that an HVAC firm would need. And obviously there are some differences because they’re a B2C, they’re a business to consumer business, whereas obviously the vast majority of MSPs are B2B. But yeah, you and I know the basic core ingredients are the same for any business. And it is absolutely about engaging with the right people in the right way and influencing them emotionally to pick you as well as giving their…

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