Since Covid-19 hit, every business in the world has had some sort of struggle. Many businesses had to shut down entirely, and some had to go into overdrive to provide for demand. For the Managed Services world, we all saw an uptick in tickets and issues while people scrambled to work from home, and after that many just heard radio silence. When everyday feels like Groundhog’s Day how do we figure out how to move forward?
A common thread throughout all businesses, even during non-pandemic times, is the need to provide value. This might seem like an obvious statement, but for many it doesn’t immediately come to mind. What does being valuable mean to an MSP? One perspective is to boil it down to the idea of always having transformational interactions. But there are also the realities of doing business, which could be seen as a transactional interaction. What is the right balance between these two types of interactions?
Transactional interactions happen all the time. Billing for monthly licenses, installing a new server, ordering a laptop, these are all things that need to be done but are mostly mundane. Many of these things can be put under the umbrella of ‘Virtual Captain Obvious’. And again, it’s not to say these things are not important or necessary, but to say that these suggestions don’t really transform your client’s business or the important relationship that the vCIO needs to have with the client.
But what if they could? A transformational recommendation is often in how we talk about the recommendation, not necessarily just what it is. If one were to put it in just one sentence, then yes, it is just ‘get a new laptop on the network’. But at the end of the day, we have to know what our job actually is; we are here to help our clients use technology to do what they do, but better. If the client’s ultimate goal is to be able to have the entire team work from home so they can save on overhead and allow their employees to travel and work flexible hours, then getting a new laptop on the network is incredibly important. If we frame that humble recommendation as a way to help transform their business, that recommendation becomes transformational.
This extends not only from the recommendations suggested, but to every day facets of life for both the MSP and the client. Giving time back is transformational for so many people and in so many ways, so if the client knows the best way to get an answer to their question is to send in a ticket, that can help transform that employee’s day. If we can get one prospect to see what our message really is and agree to meet with our outside sales person, we have already transformed that prospect’s thinking on what an MSP could be.
It really shouldn’t be surprising that the words ‘inspiration’ and ‘transformation’ sound so similar. When we inspire ourselves to think bigger we help achieve our own goals as well as the client’s. We get a win-win scenario, which doesn’t happen quite as often in our world as people think it does. The more of those win-win situations we can provide, the better it is for ourselves and everyone we work with.
Be inspirational. Be transformational!
