TruMethods Member Q&A: How MSPs Can “Look Beyond”

While the COVID-19 pandemic has the world upside down at the moment, things are going to get better, and when they do, MSPs must be ready to capitalize. That’s why being able to “look beyond” is key to their success. 

First and foremost, we have started to dedicate a lot of time towards our Inside Sales Process and ramping up our activity to develop more leads for 2021,” said Rob Baker, Director of Professional Services at Da-Com Corporation, Columbia, MO-based MSP. “We have changed our incentives to better align with our goals for the Inside Sales Role and have really defined what our ideal customer and message should look like.” 

During our one-on-one discussion, Rob provided insight on how myITprocess fits in with his business activities, how he’s improved the vCIO process during the COVID-19 pandemic and what he’s doing to look beyond.  

A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows.

When and why did you become a TruMethods member? 

I’m not sure on the exact timing, as I was strictly overseeing the sales side of the business at the time.Mike Keen was our director of IT, and he introduced the service methodology to our company sometime between 2018 and 2019.We really didn’t start moving everything into place until late in 2019, when I took over, and we started implementing myITprocess.Our Member Success Advisor, Heather Caporaso, really helped us ramp up, and then we have just recently, over the last few months, started implementing the Inside Sales Process. 

How does myITprocess fit in with your business activities? 

Not only has this brought us closer to the leadership within our clients businesses, it has also helped us gain more project work due to that new found trust.Our help desk calls have really decreased since we have found our rhythm, and we’ve even been treating our own business with these same methods, which has kept us on top of our business and technology, as well. 

How have you improved the vCIO process during the COVID-19 pandemic? 

Our vCIO is scheduling more frequent touches with our clientsand we have even offered these services at no additional costs to legacy program customers that have yet to make the transition.We have already converted one to the new program since doing so.Virtual meetings and the myITprocess platform have also boosted the attendance of these meetings. 

How are you delivering strategic value through the vCIO process? 

We’ve done this in many ways, but probably most important during this time is helping them strategize on how to use this unfortunate scenario to knock out some initiatives and keep progress moving while there is less impact on the business.We’ve seen a lot of customers use this “downtime” to finally move forward with major initiatives that would otherwise put on the back burner. Especially for companies that were underutilizing technology that now are in a position to invest in streamlining their processes to reduce those bigger costs surrounding hiring. 

How have you adapted the TAM (Net Admin) role to the needs of clients during the COVID-19 pandemic?

We have still been going onsite for the majority of our customers, although, at first, we were giving them the option.In the Midwest, our customers have been fairly open to in person visits as long as everyone wears masks.Honestly, most of the offices have deployed work from home policies, so not only is there less people, but now our TAM can focus more on their alignment status without getting pulled into other conversations or the occasional misdirected issue.

How are you “looking beyond”?

For the remainder of 2020, we have spent a lot of time reviewing our best practices within the TruMethods framework and working with vendors to make sure we are utilizing the technology to help us achieve better results for our customers. We are currently switching RMM, PSA, help desk, and SOC vendors to do this, so we are excited to further align our processes with these tools.Security has been a major focus of our vCIO during QBRs and we look to have a very successful 2021, as we have expanded our offering to include those services out of the box.

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TOPICS: COVID-19IT processmember interviewtop MSPvCIO
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