Our Experience with MSP Account Management

We focused a LOT on adding new clients, and it worked! We’ve added many clients over the last 6 years. Unfortunately, that led to many years of missing out on adding additional revenue by marketing to our current clients as well.

Once we refined our MSP account management process, our revenue, profit, and client satisfaction grew substantially. The key is to continue growing new clients AND focusing on current clients. Many MSPs will do one or the other.

In this guide, we’ll be covering the following topics on how to achieve excellent MSP Account management:

1. Consistent development and introduction of services that will provide real value to your clients
2. The client service maximizer
3. Network and security review meetings
4. Strong reporting
5. Monthly client newsletter
6. Drop-ins

While this is not an exhaustive list, these categories are where you will see the highest value for your time when upgrading your MSP account management.

Development and Introduction of Services

Almost every MSP does a decent job of identifying “what’s next” to sell. Cybersecurity training, dark web monitoring, EDR, SOC, etc. It’s impossible to be stagnant in this market.

However, what needs improvement is developing the WHY and HOW of these new services. Why do your customers need this? Can you explain this in non-technical terms that will make your clients want to invest in this? Oftentimes, MSPs are targeting small and medium-sized businesses. If it were up to them, they will have the bare minimum in place a lot of times. So, you have to make sure they realize this IS THE BARE MINIMUM in this new environment. With questions like these, proper MSP account management is crucial

Next comes the HOW. This is essential when it comes to MSP account management. Are you going to call every customer to introduce the new service? Have you added this to your network and security review template to ensure it gets discussed? Will you hold an event introducing this new service? You have to identify, based on the service, the best approach to ensure your customers are not only aware of the new service but WANT to purchase it.

What are effective methods of doing this?

1. Create a Case Study for a client that has this service in place. How did it improve their business quality of life? Social proof is a powerful tool to sell.
2. Hold a lunch and learn – If the service is important enough, planning a lunch and learn will let you buy your clients lunch, build loyalty, and have sufficient time to explain the value of the service.
3. Send an email out of your PSA explaining the service and WHY you are recommending every customer (or customers in a specific industry) have this in place. Let them know their account manager will be calling them to discuss in more detail.
4. TALK TO YOUR CLIENTS – no amount of emailing can beat picking up the phone and calling the decision maker. Shoot the Sh*t for a bit and continue building the rapport – then pivot into the service with a specific example of how it will directly benefit them.
5. Ensure the service is added to your network reviews (or technology business reviews, whatever term you use) so it can be discussed again and again until the customer moves forward.

I could go on and on all day, but these blogs are meant to be short and to the point. If you have any questions on effective ways of introducing new services, please email me at Taher@msp-camp.com.

The Client Service Maximizer

This is the single most helpful tool for MSP account management and selling to your current clients. Lay out every client and every service they currently have with you. They may already have VoIP phones or Encryption, but not through your MSP, that would not count and be left as an open opportunity. Here is a simple example of how this looks.

The service tiers and your service makeup will depend on your MSP of course. It’s good to label what plan they’re on and always be working to move them up to your higher tiers.

You will constantly refer to this chart to see the existing opportunities within your client base. The goal is to fill in the gaps.

Bonus tip: By including the price per service, you can actually identify the total MRR value per client. That will show you the gap from where your revenue and profit are now to where it could be as you implement a more robust service for your clients.

Network Review Meetings

Consistent meetings with your clients on the status of their technology, feedback from them and you, and recommendations you have to continue to improve their operational efficiency or security are invaluable. There are many terms for these. Call it whatever you want. The important thing is consistently doing these!

Ensure you include every possible service that could improve their organization or security. They may not move on it the first meeting, but after hearing it multiple times, they almost always take the recommendation as they understand it more and have been happy with your service.

There are lots of ways to do this, but I recommend the following format:

1. A long-form review of their organization. Laying out details of apps, servers, cybersecurity, etc. This will be reviewed briefly with the client just to see if they have any questions.
2. A concise report that only includes the yellow or red areas that you have recommendations or requirements on. For instance, user using a domain admin account as their everyday account – yeah, that’s red and makes it on the concise report. MDR service missing – depending on your organization this may be a yellow (recommendation) or red (requirement). Either way, this concise report gets to the meeting of the meeting.

This is SO EASY to forget to consistently hold these meetings. Your client may not get back to you on scheduling these but be persistent. Schedule the next meeting at the end of the meeting to ensure everyone is engaged with the consistency of these meetings. If you show enough value, your clients will be more than happy to schedule the next one. It’s MSP account management at it’s finest!

Strong Reporting

“Clients don’t care about patch reporting” – says the technical MSP owner.

I’ve heard this a lot. Sure, clients may not understand some of the reports you’re sending, but that means you need to refine the report to make it more digestible.

Send reports on:

1. Patch management and cybersecurity
2. Full inventory report of hardware, age, and warranty status
3. Number of help desk and proactive tickets completed for the client
4. Cybersecurity awareness training reports
5. Success of backups

Bonus – If you can consolidate these reports to send as few as possible with the same information. These reports constantly reiterate the value you bring. Decision makers are not always logging into your portal to see what’s going on. Show them what you’re doing and reaffirm the partnership as much as possible.

Monthly Client Newsletters

This is a great value add when it comes to MSP account management: make sure to send a monthly newsletter to clients. This can be through your PSA or a third-party CRM.

There are tons of good newsletter templates so I won’t go into the best way to format your guide. Reach out if you need assistance with this. Here are some ideas for content for your newsletter:

1. Testimonial of the month – get a testimonial or review you’ve received and add it to your newsletter to show social proof of the great service you provide.
2. Service highlight – highlight a new or existing service to your clients
3. Tech Tip – include a relevant tech tip for continuous client education.
4. A new employee or existing employee spotlight – has one of your employees recently received a new certification, graduated from college, or achieved something? Include it! Have a new employee starting? Include it in your newsletter to introduce them!
5. Events or webinars – Include any upcoming events or webinars to drive attendance

Get creative with these. You want to show your customers how active you are as well as providing additional value with these. The more someone trusts you, the more they buy from you. Period.

Drop-ins

Strategically schedule drop-ins for your clients. How you decide this will depend on your client’s location and priority. Priority can be determined by a lot of things but will probably come down to size and upsell value. Reference the client service maximizer to identify your hit list of drop-ins and start scheduling!

You can’t just show up though.

Bring breakfast and coffee, as well as sales sheets and more information on the services you would like them to buy. In addition to your consistent reviews, this will help to fill in the gaps even quicker.

There’s a reason medical reps bring food when they pitch: it truly does create a captive audience! The same applies to top-level MSP account management.

Conclusion

If you read this entire guide, then congratulations! If you actually put this advice to use, there is no doubt you will grow your revenue, profit, and client satisfaction through adopting proven MSP account management strategies. While this was a quick summary, I hope it provides an excellent framework to follow.

If you’re interested in learning more about growing your MSP, please consider becoming a member of MSP Camp! We have created ready-to-run campaigns that have been extremely effective at growing our MSP from sub $1 million to over $4 million in revenue. In addition, we’ve added brandable marketing templates to define your brand and start marketing to new and existing clients.