IT Provider Network - The Podcast for Growing IT Service Providers

If you're like me you started 2020 or Q1 for that matter with a list of initiatives you need to accomplish in your business. For us, we follow the 3HAG and Gazelles methodologies, so our 3-year initiatives get broken down to our annual goals which become or quarterly priorities.

Somethings these priorities are to support the company, a division, a department or even a specific product or service. Whatever the objective is we always want to make sure that everyone is rowing in the right direction and that the objectives are really moving the company forward.

Do your initiatives really move your MSP forward?

Last week we had a leadership meeting and set out to do just that. See if our rocks in 2019 really "stuck" and made a lasting change in the company. I don't think it was entirely surprising but most of them didn't. And that's what I want to talk to you about today. 10 things you should think about before launching an initiative in your company so that you can have a better chance of really moving your MSP forward.

[INTRO]

Defining your Rocks

Of course, I don't know your planning process but when we decide to move forward with something in the company, we have, in the past, set about it by documenting the priority with the following header type data: Let me give you an example.

The title or subject of the priority: Improve operations and scalability by assessing and improving PSA configurations and processes.

Why is this a top priority?: We are seeing that reactive tickets are taking too long to get resolved and we want to move to a dispatch type process for the helpdesk.

What possible roadblocks do you see?: Techs are used to working from the service board, and now they will be working solely from their calendar. This might be a difficult change.

What are some potential side effects from this?: Clients may not like speaking to a dispatcher since they are used to going direct-to-tech. This might cause some unhappy clients.

From here we flesh out the priority with milestones and indicators of success. This concept of milestones and indicators of success confused me for quite some time but through observations of my own team, I think that right-brain people are better with the indicators of success and left brain (analytical) people with the milestones. So what are milestones and indicators of success?

Milestones: Milestones are points along the way of the project or priority that needs to be accomplished so that the end goal can be met. Think of milestones as the important tasks or events needed to accomplish the project. These are typically assigned to dates so that the priority can be completed within the timeframe.

Indicators of Success: This is how you know you are successful in achieving your goal with the priority. We have indicators of success in the "yellow", "green" and "super-green" levels. This corresponds loosely to the good, better, best type of achievement for a priority. Start with the end in mind when you think of your indicators of success.

Once we have our priorities, rocks, initiatives defined and an owner assigned, we score them weekly. We score the achievement of the priority as it exists today and our forecasted score for the end of the period. Quarterly if this is a quarterly goal. We score 1 to 4 with 3 being on track and good and 4 being exceeding expectations.

New and Improved for 2020 - The 10 Questions you need to ask before moving forward

This is what we have done for the last several years until last week's meeting w...

Show notes to follow

Ask your questions or share your feedback

•Comment on the shownotes below

•Email [email protected] (audio files welcome)

Get on the mailing list

Low Volume by it is THE PLACE TO BE for all of my insider information. If you're on the list, you'll be the first to know. Signup Here

Tell 'Em I Sent You

If you investigate or purchase any product or service that I have talked about, please remember to mention that I sent you. I may or may not get a small commission but more importantly I hope to spread the word about the IT Provider Network.

Please Subscribe

Please consider Subscribing to the Podcast it is the only measure of listenership I have.

Give me a Review

Your written iTunes reviews encourage me and they help other people find the podcast.

If you appreciate the information you are learning from the IT Provider Network then please do me a HUGE FAVOR and write a review on iTunes or on Stitcher!

Connect with Me

On the socials as @TerryRossi or @ITProviderNet

Help a Brother Out

* Sign up for Coinbase

* Buy something from Amazon with my Affiliate Link

I put these down here in case you are looking for anything from Amazon, I get a small commission if you click-thru from this site. You don't have to buy these items just click through from this page. Thanks in advance!

If you don't follow Jay McBain from Forrester Research, you should. Not only is he a thought leader in our industry and a really nice guy but if you don't follow him you would have missed his recent article The 64 Best Channel Podcasts Of 2019 where the IT Provider Network was listed among the best of the best.

It was really ironic because I just saw Jay present at Marketopia's 4U2Grow conference in Clearwater last month. Jay actually did two presentations but his first one blew me away and I want to share with you my takeaways from that talk on today's episode of the IT Provider Network Podcast.

Before I get into Jay's talk which was entitled "Achieving Extraordinary Success in 2020 and Beyond" I have to tell you that even before Jay added The IT Provider Network to his article about the best 64 Channel Podcasts I was going to tell you about this research because it blew me away. Honest Jay I was!

As I said Jay was one of the speakers at the Marketopia 4U2GROW users conference. If you have never been to a 4U2GROW conference I encourage you to attend next year. It is a really intimate event at a world-class venue with great speakers like Jay McBain,Terry and Andra Hedden, Manual Palachuk and Erik Simpson.

If you aren't familiar with Marketopia, they provide the channel (MSP's and Vendors) with Marketing and Appointment Setting services.

For full disclosure, I am a client and they gave me a Partner of the Year award. Having said that, they kill it for us with leads and that's why we use them.

Back to Jay's presentation - I could never begin to do it justice but never the less it was so eye-opening that as soon as I was back at the office I attempted to present it to my management team. Here were my big takeaways.

* Buyers have changed - they are much more educated about what you are selling before you even speak to them. The playing field is much more leveled and in fact, buyers might know more about your offering and how it fairs in the marketplace that your salespeople do. Google is the great equalizer and buyers are making much more of the buying decision before they reach out to us. What this means to me is we all need to do a better job of getting in front of buyers BEFORE they have a need. Be the one they think of and can find on Google because 68% of them prefer to do their own research before talking to a salesperson.* A whopping 65% of tech buying decisions are now made by business leaders, not IT. What we used to call shadow IT and look at as a threat is now becoming the norm. Line of Business leaders are now sourcing their own solutions or demanding specific solutions from IT. What this means to me is we need to expand our marketing relationships with our clients and prospects. No longer is it enough to build a relationship with the owner of the company, you need to expand your definition of the buyer and cater to all of them...uniquely.* 80% of tech buyers report that the salesperson is NOT specialized enough. Wow, that means in our buyer's eyes we are not getting it done. We need to work harder getting our teams up to date on the ever-changing tech landscape, cyber, compliance and everything else we profess to be the "expert" in.* Jay also reported that 96% of MSP's are unable to scale past 10 employees, and although Jay didn't report it, I know almost that same percentage can't scale past 1 million in annual revenue.

The presentation went much deeper into these stats as well as the state of the channel,

Information on upcoming training from Tony Robbins, Dean Graziosi, and Russell Brunson - Live April 30th

One of my favorite Peter Gabriel songs is "Kiss that Frog"  and today I want to urge you all to start each day by kissing that frog ... although I pretty sure my advice is a little different than Peters.

The dreaded Task List

You know all the things on your to-do list that never seem to get done?   The stuff you push off every day because something more important gets in the way, or at least that's what you keep telling yourself and your co-workers, clients or employers.

These are the frogs I want you to kiss.

In our company, we have an accountability sheet We call it the "WWW" sheet.  WWW stands for who, what and when and it is the way we monitor tasks that need to be done to move our company forward.   Most of the tasks relate to the 6 core functions in our business.    By assigning a "who" and a "when" to each "what" we make someone accountable to the task and we have assigned a deadline to it.

The problem is some of those who, what , whens never seem to get done.

They get discussed each week during our huddle and the due date gets pushed out further and further but they don't get done.

Since this is happening in the senior leadership team, the creme de la creme in our company,   I'm sure it's happening in team meetings throughout the company and that sucks.  Wasted time and agreed upon priorities not getting done.

These hard to accomplish tasks, whether they are personal like getting a haircut, or an oil change for your car,  or business things like giving a performance review, or calling a client to tell them you are sorry for a mistake you made.   These are the things I call frogs.  I call them frogs because they are things we don't even want to touch.  We move away from them and try to avoid them at all costs.

Kiss that Frog

Imagine for a minute that you really had to kiss a frog,  imagine it was on your WWW list.    You had to give it a big wet 3-second kiss.

You'd probably put it off as long as humanly possible, schedule it out for a year in the future.     If you had a year to do it you would probably do it on day 365, the very last day of the year.    It's human nature we put off what we don't want to do till the last possible moment.

Think about it,  when you finally forced yourself to kiss that frog, you'd pucker up and give it a big long wet kiss right on the slimy skin of his back.

What would happen?

You'd probably freak out a bit, spit and complain LOUDLY, but it would be over in a minute, well really 3 seconds TOPS!  3 seconds that you spent 364 days agonizing over,   A year of stress for something that took less than a minute.

When it comes to things we don't want to do, agonizing over it is almost always worse than actually doing it.  Once you kiss that frog, you're a little freer, you have less weight on your shoulders and you are free to move on to the next thing without the burden of kissing that frog hanging over you.

 Better get a new notebook!

I can help you fix this problem but you better get a new notebook because I bet if you're like me you have hundreds of frogs to kiss.

You see the way these things work is that we constantly procrastinate on all of lives burdens and they build up in our minds.  We carry them around like heavy luggage every day.

I know you don't think you have 100 open items on your internal to-do list but I bet you do!  I might even venture to bet you have twice that and that's a lot of weight to carry around.   These little things add up and bring you down.

Drive to the Finish – Themes and How You Can Use Them

I recently implemented a quarterly theme that I want to share with you today. I hope you’ll get a good grasp of the tactical things we did but I hope you’ll also take away the secondary meaning, the importance of taking care of your employees. It’s crucial you include them in the success of the company and make everyone feel wanted. This theme relates to the book Scaling Up by Verne Harnish where you concentrate on four different things; people, tasks, strategy, and execution. You do this by having a communications rhythm, focusing on key metrics, having and achieving quarterly rocks then having a strategy and a plan.

What We Did

We wanted to finish the year strong, so we implemented on of the things Verne talks about in the Scaling Up book and that is the concept of a theme. A theme is used to get everyone on board with the goals and objectives of the company. Typically, these themes are carried out quarterly and are centered around the critical metric trying to be achieved.

First, we decided on the metric, which was revenue. Then we figured out how everyone could help with revenue.

After that, we put together a series of communication messages, a few gifts for the team and a weekly cadence for communicating about the theme.

We created a custom field in ConnectWise and created a dashboard to track leads. We looked at leads generated by department, in order to create a little bit of rivalry between departments, and we started monitoring it at the beginning of the quarter. This is the metric we used to measure success.

Get a Rhythm going!

In addition, we established a communications pattern. At the end of the week, I created a short 2-3-minute video in front of a green screen with a finish line. The idea behind these videos was to motivate the teams and keep the theme alive in order to motivate to the finish. I talked about the wins in the previous week and told the teams where we were. If we fell behind, we would talk about that as well. In each video, I singled out a person and filmed them in random locations.

I use a tool called BombBomb to send emails out. Through this, I can track opens and clicks to see who is actually looking at it. The teams also have the opportunity to respond back and make comments each week.

I also ordered plastic swag bags and put a logo on it that I had designed at LogoNerds. In our last swag bag, I tried to incorporate something from one of our customers.

On Mondays we have our long meetings, so on Mondays, we try to drive the theme home. We talk about wins, where we can improve and where we stand in revenue.

What You Need

If you are looking to implement something similar, all you need is a mobile phone, maybe a tripod so you have a little more room when filming the videos, and a tool like BombBomb to track communication.

 

Ask your questions or share your feedback

•Comment on the shownotes below

•Email [email protected] (audio files welcome)

Get on the mailing list

Low Volume by it is THE PLACE TO BE for all of my insider information. If you're on the list, you'll be the first to know. Signup Here

Tell 'Em I Sent You

If you investigate or purchase any product or service that I have talked about, please remember to mention that I sent you. I may or may not get a small commission but more importantly I hope to spread the word about the IT Provider Network.

Please Subscribe

Please consider Subscribing to the Podcast it is the only measure of listenership I have.

What do Jordi Roca, Chris Brogan, and Michael Porter have to do with your MSP?

As I am sure all of you do, I get inspiration from all different kinds of places.   This week three different things caught my attention,

Let me tell you the stories and then we can talk about how that applies to our businesses.

Jordi Roca

Jordi is the youngest of three boys and perhaps the most talented pastry chef in the world, but he wasn’t always “that guy”.   He started out as many of us do,  a little lost and just going through the motions in his brothers’ restaurant.

Jordi was much younger than his two older brothers Both of which were already running a successful fine dining restaurant.

Jordi worked around the restaurant essentially just doing time, putting in his shift then heading out partying all night.  He was young and to be honest really didn’t care about anything.

Jordi struggled to find himself and make his mark in life.  Until one day when his boss in the restaurant had a terrible accident. He fell off a ladder and was out for an extended time.    At this time Jordi’s brothers' restaurant  L SAYYA CAAN ROCA was already a one star Michelin restaurant and they had a lot to lose.

Jordi stepped up and faithfully reproduced the recipes that he mentor left in a wooden box in the restaurant.  They were good but nothing spectacular and when Jordi stepped out of his comfort zone and try to make his own dessert it was less than stellar.

It wasn’t until Jordi decided to take a class on ice cream that it all changed for him.

His instructor was teaching about the importance of the air in ice-cream, not just the fact that you need to have airy ice cream but also that you need to have clean air so that the ice cream doesn’t take on any off-putting flavors.

Jordi thought about it on the way home and then decided to think about it another way.   What if he used the air to put flavor into the ice cream?

The next morning, he went into the restaurant and as crazy as this sounds, he blew cigar smoke into the ice cream as it was being made.   After it set up he gave it to his brothers to taste and the rest is history.

His “Trip to Havana” dessert as its called is now world renown.

 

If you order it at El Celler de Can Roca,   you’ll get what looks like a cigar-shaped ice-cream sandwich in a glass ashtray.   It looks like a cigar and the smoke-infused it heightens the experience.

By the way, El Celler de Can Roca is in Spain and has been ranked the best restaurant in the world in 2013 and continues to be ranked in the top 5 restaurants in the world.  It now boasts a Michelin 3 star rating and Jordi is at the top of his game.

 

Jordi learned to take inspiration from everywhere and everything.   He looked outside of his environment and has reaped huge rewards because of it.

Chris Brogan

The second mentor I learned from this week is Chris Brogan.    If you don’t know who Chris is,  Chris is an accomplished Author of a bunch of books, including the bestseller “Trust Agents” and has spoken for or consulted with the biggest brands you know, including Disney, Coke, Google, GM, Microsoft, Sony and many more.

In addition to working with the big guys Chris also does group coaching with small businesses through his Owner Insider program and that’s how I know Chris and his business partner Rob Hatch.

His best free work comes out on his weekly email which he sends every Sunday.  If you want to get on this mailing list, you can do that at ChrisBrogan.com.

It seems that there is a new conference for IT Service Providers almost every week and making the decision on which conference to attend can be tough.  There are big conferences,  Channel X, IT Nation, and DattoCon come to mind.    Medium size shows like Robin Robbins Bootcamp, Gary Pica's Snizzfest and Marketopia's 4U2GROW conference.

I was fortunate to attend Marketopia's 4U2Grow conference for the second time a couple of weeks ago.   If you remember back to episode 31 of the IT Provider Network, Outsourcing your appointment setting, I talked about the pros and cons of outsourcing telemarketing for lead generation.

I signed up with Marketopia at the 2nd annual 4U2Grow conference last year.  For MSP's they offer the normal plethora of marketing services.  Website design, Email Blasts, Pay Per Click and SEO services but their big seller for MSP and Vendors alike are callers.  1/2 time or full-time telemarketers cold calling on behalf of MSP's to end users and vendors to MSP's.

Marketopia clearly is doing a bunch of things right.   This year they were named to the INC 500 list in position 232.  Marketopia,  having scaled its revenue at an impressive 2041% growth rate has joined the ranks of others on the INC 500 list including ClickFunnels (#76), KnowBe4 (#96) and Pax8 (#68).

Their conference 4U2Grow and the associated roadshows are a big part of their success.  This conference for their clients and prospects is an educational event with little or no direct pitching but the Marketopia sales team are always looking to close deals at the show.  Jeff Laws and Austin McCord are gently working over their prospects and trying to make deals before the end of the show.

On day one of the conference, I was asked to host a VIP Mastermind for existing Marketopia clients.  It was an intimate group of MSP's big and small from all over the county.  We talked about what's working and what isn't.   It was honest and straightforward.   If you have listened to this podcast for a while you know that I call it like it is,  if you are trying to BS me I will call you out on it.

I did it, called some people out,  a few times in the MSP's mastermind and with Marketopia too.  We are in an industry that is constantly changing and I made sure I let Terry Heddon, the CEO of Marketopia know where I saw some BS in the industry but that's a whole different podcast.

So what was my big takeaway from the conference?  Well, I had a few.  Most of them came from Terry Heddon or his wife Andrea but Adam Slutski formally of connectwise fame.   Here they are.

1 - We have a lot of business in our existing client base that we may not be capitalizing on.   We need to make sure we are doing our best to sell our whole stack to as much of our client base as possible.

Here are strategies for increasing sales into your existing base.:

* Identify products or services that your client could buy but doesn’t.

* Develop a plan for expanding your relationship with contacts within the account.

* Keep trying to add value for all the contacts you know at the client.

* Give clients ideas on how to improve their business operations - become more efficient, more profitable and improve their customer servide.

* Make customers feel they have a special relationship with you.

* Identify your customer’s customers and help them win.

2 - We need to be more strategic in our marketing. Specifically our about us page.

Did you know your website's "about us" page is the 2nd most visited page on your website second only to the home page.  Do they still call it a home page?

Put some effort into your about page,

Are you getting the most out of your remote team members?

In his excellent article, Rob Rawson, of the Time Doctor website.  Rob lays out 25 tips for high-performance remote teams.   In this episode of the  IT Provider Network Podcast, I am going to go through the article and give you my take on how to get the most from remote teams.

Since 1994 roughly half of our team has been remote.  Always full-time W2 type employees but with the freedom to work wherever they lived.

* Compensate for the fact you aren’t bumping into each other. Find a way to facilitate conversation via chat and screen sharing. Don’t forget to make these members feel like a member of the team, even though they aren’t there in person.

* Have a chat room open at all times. You could use Skype, Teams, HipChat or Slack. Keep the Chat channel open.

* On that same note, don’t overload team members with chat or email. Make sure they aren’t subscribed to too many channels.

* Choose the communication style that is right for that member. This comes into play with homebased employees or foreign employees. Is an email, phone call, chat or video call most appropriate? Use tools like loom.com and screen sharing tools such as GoToMeeting, Zoom, etc.

* Video conferencing is also important. It brings the remote employee into the work space and they get to collaborate in real time with peers. This also makes everyone in the call stay more focused.

* Set up a daily huddle with that team member. Weekly meeting and monthly meetings are also important. Set up a communication structure for effective communication.

* Use tools to collaborate on documents and spreadsheets. Microsoft Office 365 or Google tools are great tools to get a document up and collaborate on it.

* Use a project management system. Make sure you are using it and are holding your employees accountable while ensuring they are using it and using it your way.

* Make sure you have systems that drive everything people do in your company. You need a standardized way of doing things that you are following and always improving that you are working with.

* Allow some degree of flexible works hours but have some consistent hours. People working from home typically want some flexibility in their work hours. That’s okay but you have to keep core working hours that your whole team can be working, including that remote employee.

* Track their work output, whether the team is working virtual or not. Measure productivity in your team. What are the indicators of success? Make sure you have communicated what you want to have done and what the measurable goal they need to accomplish is. Don’t just track it but check in regularly about the progress of their work. You might be really disappointed if you wait until the deadline. If you check in during the process, you can help negate any issues and get the team member on track, if need be.

* Rescue Time is a tool that can be used to track how much time you spend doing certain things each day.

* Organize a system of overlapping for communicating in different time zones. Have time, a good chunk of your day, where the entire team is working at the same time.

* Do a quarterly review to see how your team members are doing and coping with working remotely. If your company is not doing a good job of making them feel like they are a part of a team, it’s easy for them to become lonely, possibly start feeling irritated and isolated.

* When you are