Category: TruMethods Blog

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Getting Ahead of the Game: Follow Where the Enterprise Is Heading

Posted on | Author Gary Pica

Knowing where to shift your business isn’t easy. There are many external factors in play, and we’re usually too busy operating in our businesses to identify when and where we need to pivot to stay ahead of things. However, there is already a path to follow if you look closely enough.

The enterprise is usually further down the road than we are in the managed service provider (MSP) space. There are more resources, money and talent dedicated to enterprise businesses. It’s nearly impossible for MSPs to get ahead when the focus is directed elsewhere. However, when you are trying to figure out where to shift your business, turn to how things are being done in the enterprise, and you will be surprised at what you can learn.

Think to yourself: What is the enterprise doing I am not?

What type of technologies is the enterprise using? What about artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), robotic process automation (RPA) and ChatGPT? How are enterprise businesses using these technologies to streamline processes, automate workflows and deliver exceptional customer service?

We are already seeing the impact these technologies are starting to have on society. (Articles on ChatGPT are popping up everywhere, aren’t they?) While it may have taken a while, these technologies are here to stay, and they’re making their way down to our space and elsewhere.

For instance, consider how AI, ML, RPA and other types of technologies are changing support in the enterprise. This means our support role will be different in several years. These technologies have evolved far enough now that they are changing our space, too. These technologies are complete game changers for technicians. (Think about how much of our time we spend on closing tickets.)

Another core part of our business is projects. Even here, we see automation changing how we operate and do business. For example, Microsoft will continue to automate server and endpoint deployments.

Also, if you want to know where the MSP space is heading, it’s not a bad idea to follow the money in the enterprise. Where are investors investing in the enterprise? What types of tools and software are they writing checks for? While investing in automation, they are also throwing money at security. The enterprise is really far ahead of where we are in this space, which means our role in security will not be the same in the future as it is today.

We can learn much about where our industry is heading by paying attention to what’s happening in the enterprise. While the changes won’t happen immediately, they are inevitable. The more we keep an eye on what’s happening above, the better off we will be as an industry.

Seeing the Cathedral, Not the Bricks: The Power of Perspective in Business

Posted on | Author Gary Pica

How you approach life and business can mean the difference between failure and success. When things aren’t going well, sometimes you need a change in perspective. Making an effort to look at life differently will unlock opportunities for you when you least expect them.

I have a story that explains what a difference in perspective can make.

Two bricklayers are laying bricks on a hot afternoon. They’re working on the same project but spaced out from one another. A man approaches the first bricklayer and asks about what he’s doing. Wiping sweat from his forehead, the bricklayer tells the man that his job is to continue adding one brick on top of another until he completes his shift. The bricklayer then reaches into the pile beside him to grab another brick and returns to what he is doing.

Unsatisfied with the first bricklayer’s answer, the man walks down to the second bricklayer. Unlike the first bricklayer, the second bricklayer has a little pep in his step and is whistling. “Excuse me, sir,” the man says. “What are you doing?” Looking up at the man, the bricklayer smiles and says, “I’m building a cathedral.”

You’ve heard me say this before, but I will repeat it: Success in business and life is 90% attitude, self-image and self-discipline, and 10% is knowledge. How are you viewing your work? Are you giving it your all and turning negatives into positives? What about your self-limiting beliefs? What are you doing to overcome the obstacles you’re putting in front of yourself? You’re usually your worst enemy.

After you assess your life and adjust accordingly, turning to your team members is next. They’re the ones running your business and interacting with your customers every day. How are they viewing things? Do they have positive mindsets? Are they showing up to work for a larger purpose? If not, you have some work to do.

Your business lacks vision when your team members aren’t working toward a larger purpose. If that’s the case, it’s time for you to do some soul-searching. Take some time to look inward. Think about what you want from life. Where do you see yourself 10 years from now? What about 20 or 30 years from now? Once you know the answers to these questions, you can create values, goals and a vision for your business.

Remember: Positivity begets positivity. Changing your perception isn’t easy, but it’s necessary to succeed in business and life. Thinking positively begins with you.

Positivity is contagious, so don’t be afraid to spread it.

The Benefits of Business Metrics for Performance Management and Accountability

Posted on | Author Gary Pica

Metrics are critical to the success of a business, business functions and every role within those functions.

If you have been with TruMethods for a while, you’re aware of my passion for numbers and accountability. Throughout my career, I’ve learned that visibility and accountability on metrics alone could move the needle. From a high level, I call this “instrumenting the business.”

At the top, you have company goals, key drivers and high-level metrics (I call these “North Stars”). For a managed service provider (MSP), that could be the average seat price, average MRR, net MRR gain or support efficiency. All of this cascades down to every service delivery area, each functional area in the business and then to each role. All the metrics need to tie back to company goals, which takes some thought and ongoing maintenance.

Instrumentation should flow to everyone — that is critical. Too often, people work hard and think they are doing an excellent job when they are not meeting key metrics. We all want to do an excellent job, but it is not easy if we do not know exactly what success looks like.

Some people say that extreme focus on instrumentation and accountability can be bad for culture, like you are micromanaging people. I could not disagree more! This goes back to the concept of the essence. If each team contributes to the definition of the essence, then accountability to metrics is how each contributor can take responsibility for their results. To me, that is awesome.

No matter how good you are at this process, you can improve. Too many times, I ask business leaders questions about metrics they should know, and they cannot answer me. That’s like flying a plane without proper instrumentation.

That’s not the flight I want to be on. What about you?

Q1 2023 Check-In: How We’re Tracking Against Our Goals

Posted on | Author Gary Pica

Open your calendar to today’s date. What is so significant about it?

It may be hard to believe, but Q1 2023 is coming to an end. Did you spend your time productively? Are you hitting your goals so far this year? If you are unsure, this is a good time for you to check in with your team members and evaluate where you’re at as an organization.

First things first — did you complete your 2023 business plan? Now, I’m talking about a real plan, not your budget, and one that ties vision to targets, to your annual plan to your quarterly action plan. Has the plan been communicated to everyone in the organization? Does each functional area and service delivery area have a plan in place to support your business goals? 

Next, will your annual initiatives and quarterly actions move the needle, or are you focused on symptoms of the business that won’t make the kind of difference you think they will?

Finally, are you on track to complete your Q1 initiatives or, as I call them, your quarterly rocks? If not, now is the time to adjust. 

Everyone is at a different place in their business maturity, and everyone has different goals; however, there are two common things that every MSP needs to focus on more now than ever before — adding new monthly recurring revenue (MRR) at the right price and increasing the value and price to your current base. 

No one’s costs are going down right now. Tool and employee costs are higher for all of us. We also have more to do for our customers. While you can improve many areas of your business, adding new business as well as MRR and value to existing customers can help achieve your goals. 

Everything else cascades down from there. Make this your culture. You can offer your customers and team members the best experience with healthy margins.

Automated QBR Meeting Management

Posted on | Author TruMethods

Conduct meetings your clients will love, with ease 

We are thrilled to introduce a new workflow in myITprocess that will take your Quarterly Business Review (QBR) meetings to the next level. You may already know that preparing for QBR meetings and tackling the post-meeting routines are extremely tedious and time-consuming. Now with this new workflow, you can conduct QBR meetings effortlessly with automated meeting invitations, agenda creation and post-meeting summary reports.

Save time by eliminating QBR administrative overhead, easily getting client buy-in and holding clients accountable with seamless meeting management from start to finish. Use this time to uncover missed revenue opportunities and cultivate profitable client relationships.

Let’s dive deeper into how this works.

Prepare for QBR meetings in seconds 

You can use this workflow to easily schedule QBRs by sending a detailed meeting invite straight to the participants’ preferred email platform, such as Google or Outlook, without leaving myITprocess. Add the participants, time, date, location and notes to discuss during your QBRs directly from within myITprocess.

Instantly create your QBR agendas by dragging myITprocess recommendations from your strategic IT roadmap onto the meeting invite, all in the same window. Agenda items will be automatically attached as a PDF to the meeting invite so participants can easily preview it beforehand.

Make QBRs a breeze with Presentation Mode 

Did you know that only 20% of MSPs have a structured QBR process despite it being critical for their success? myITprocess makes QBRs a breeze with a tried-and-tested framework, enabling you to arrange your IT roadmap and recommendations into an interactive presentation for streamlined discussion.

You can use the interactive, simple-to-follow and intuitive Presentation Mode feature in myITprocess to increase meeting engagement with clients. As you conduct the meeting, the agenda items added during the QBR meeting invite will automatically show in an interactive Presentation Mode. Easily modify, edit and update agenda items, and capture client’s feedback on the fly as you review each recommendation. This saves you time summarizing meeting outcomes and holds clients accountable for decisions made.

Put your post-meeting tasks on autopilot 

As only 10% of client-facing reports get read by your clients, you need to create bite-sized reports that your clients can easily read and act on.

Moreover, you can review agenda items during the QBR with Presentation Mode and effortlessly convert the decisions made for each item into a client-facing summary report to help keep clients accountable. All attendees will automatically receive the summary report after the meeting with the notes discussed for each agenda item.

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Learn more about this feature in this Knowledge Base article.

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Right of Boom: Key Takeaways for MSPs

Posted on | Author Gary Pica

In February, I attended the Right of Boom conference, a cybersecurity event for managed service providers (MSPs). Many of the conference’s attendees were from the Weekly CyberCall community. I wrapped up the show with a few words and moderated a panel on packaging, pricing and security go-to-market. Based on my experience, I have some thoughts to share with you.

First off, the show’s format was unique. The conference organizers wrapped the entire show around a threat brief. They chose a threat actor and started left of boom with protection and moved right of boom to respond and recover. This gave everyone — owners, CIOs, vCISOs and engineers — unique perspectives on where they are regarding how they handle cyberattacks, which was awesome.

CISA Executive Director Brandon Wales also did a remote live interview. To me, this was a big deal, and it marks a turning point in our industry. Our government’s highest levels now recognize the MSP’s role in cybersecurity. There has also been some discussion on Capitol Hill around new cyber guidelines, some of which move more responsibility from SMBs to IT providers. While legislators may not pass these guidelines until 2024, we must follow developments closely.

Finally, I saw many of our TruPeer members there, which made me excited. Our members are the ones making progress and reassessing their security postures as a result. I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished as a community and will continue to ensure we’re leading the industry.

The CyberCall has built a great community, and I’m happy to see so many of you benefit from it. Change equals opportunity for well-run mature MSPs. This is an important year for all of us. Don’t lose sight of what’s ahead.

Too Many Anchors Are Holding You Back

Posted on | Author Gary Pica

Many of you may have heard the saying that you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. While this may not be completely accurate, it has some truth to it.

You should spend time with positive people and avoid negative thinking. Because of this, I have fewer relationships, but they are much closer ones.

However, you must be careful. There are well-intended people close to us — family, friends, business partners — who can hold us back. These are people we have known for a long time, some of whom treat us like the people we used to be. Others love us, but they project onto us based on their anxieties or self-images.

These people can become anchors regarding your ability to fulfill your potential or improve your self-image — and they are not easy to deal with. It does not mean you necessarily have unhealthy relationships with these individuals. It just means you must be aware and find ways to communicate differently.

You are responsible for your attitude and self-image. You must protect them at all costs.

I am fortunate to have had people around me who have seen my potential. Despite that, I have had situations, opportunities or decisions over the years where others created unnecessary uncertainty for me on things that I was sure of.

Again, awareness is the key.

Take a minute to look at the people around you in business and life, and ask, “How do I like the way I see myself through their eyes?”

If you realize too many anchors are holding you down, it is time for you to take out the bolt cutters and set sail.

Decisions by MSP Leaders: Balancing Input and Action

Posted on | Author Gary Pica

I recently reviewed the results of the Schnizzfest 2023 Event Surveys with my team. (Thankfully, our members rated the event highly across the board.) However at some point, my team asked me what I looked for when reviewing feedback. I told them my goal wasn’t to have the highest ratings, which surprised them and may surprise you as well.

Our members needed to hear some of the sessions at Schnizzfest, even though they might have liked other session topics better. It’s more important to me that we deliver the content they need, not just the content they like the most.

Something else I considered: No matter how hard you try, you can’t please everyone. A session that is the best for someone, for another that might not be the case. No one is going to like everything you do.

There’s a lesson that I have learned in running several successful businesses and it relates to both customer and employee feedback. The customer is sometimes wrong. In our business, as you know, the customer is often wrong — and, unfortunately, we’re the ones who must tell them. They want our results their way. It’s not that we don’t want feedback (of course, we do), but we don’t take feedback or criticism at face value.

I don’t love customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores when business leaders tie too much weight to them. You must consider two things. Knowing what people like and dislike is essential, but you must correlate it with what’s important to them. Sometimes a customer or employee may hate something, but it’s unimportant. Other things they may mildly dislike, but it’s super important.

We want feedback from employees, but business leaders need to make decisions eventually. For instance, when selling myITprocess to MSP owners, they would agree that they needed alignment and a vCIO process and that myITprocess would help. But then they would get their techs involved and have them vote on it. An objection I would usually overcome by responding with, “That’s great! Did your techs ever run high-performing MSPs?”

Listen, feedback is good, but leaders need to make decisions. Be sure to remember that leaders have a different perspective than any one employee or any one customer.

Hope Springs Eternal, But So Does Procrastination

Posted on | Author Gary Pica

It’s a new year and the middle of a new quarter from a business perspective. As the saying goes, “Hope springs eternal.” Unfortunately, so does procrastination.

Just as you may have probably felt a sense of urgency at the end of 2022, you may feel like you have plenty of time in 2023. However, time goes by quickly.

Every week, when I record my audio messages, I put them into a monthly folder inside an annual folder. Recently, before I created the 2023 folder, I scrolled through all the folders dating back to 2009. More than the ball dropping on New Year’s Eve, this is the moment that time hits me the most.

Each year, it seems like there’s a shorter time between these annual folders. I feel fortunate that I have spent my time well over this last decade in terms of my career and with my family. However, it also makes me feel a sense of urgency for everything I want to experience or accomplish with the time I have left. This is one way I gain perspective and encourages me to act on important things I’ve been putting off.

You may think you have plenty of time this year or in the future. But time passes at an increased rate for you each year. Don’t you feel it?

Here’s what I’m suggesting: It would help if you had the same focus and urgency in Q1 as you did at year-end. You need to set goals to determine actions and have an accountability system. This is how we make the best use of our time.

I have watched time go by in this industry for 25 years. I’ve seen some people make fantastic use of their time while others have only made modest progress toward their goals.

In 2023, be the former.

5 Must-Read Blog Posts About Managing Your Customer Base in 2023

Posted on | Author Gary Pica

Managing your customer base isn’t only about delivering customer support effectively. Sometimes you need to do things on the backend to ensure your business keeps running.

For instance, how diverse is your customer base? Is everyone paying the right price for your services, or is one customer the bulk of your portfolio? Also, how are you addressing customer challenges? Are you constantly looking for ways to help your customers overcome business hurdles?

Here are five must-read blog posts to help you better manage your customer base in 2023.

Care for Your ‘Customer Garden’

Your customer base is like a garden. It needs to be pruned, watered and cared for regularly, or it becomes overgrown and overwhelming.

In a Remote World, Don’t Forget About Face-to-Face Time with Your MSP Customers

Has your “face time” been reduced with customers? Do your vCIOs prefer Zoom meetings over in-person meetings? You can’t underestimate the impact of face-to-face time with customers. I know it’s easier to be remote and sometimes it may seem more efficient — but there is a cost.

Are All Your Eggs in One MSP Basket?

Putting all your eggs in one basket is never a good strategy. It’s always best to diversify most aspects of your business, especially your customer base. Most of us have been there before. We score a big customer and tout it as a big win, which is a significant milestone for your business. Landing a whale can completely change your business. However, not always for the better.

This One Thing

You have a lot of choices as an MSP in terms of priorities. You can focus on trying to be more efficient with professional services or support, re-evaluate sales, add tools and standards, and so on. The list is endless. However, there is one thing that can make a difference in your business.

MSPs, Here’s Your Reality Check

I want you to think back to before the pandemic began in March 2020. How have your customers’ needs changed? What are you doing for them today that you weren’t doing then? What tools have you added to your stack? What security process and governance have you added?