A while back I wrote a blog about my friends over at Live Virtual Help Desk and took the position that you should be focused on the most important aspects of your business. All too often I speak with owners of MSPs that spend an inordinate of their personal time focused on the minutiae and the bits / bytes of technology. I know nearly all of us have come from a technical background but is this really going to get you to your goals in the long run?
Since 2008, MSPmentor has compiled a list of 250 people in the Managed Services industry that you should know. It’s comprised of MSP business owners, thought leaders, coaches and vendors that make a significant contribution to the industry.
The 2010 version of the MSPmentor 250 has been released this week and I’m extremely honored that my name appears on the list. Check it out here http://www.mspmentor.net/mspmentor-250-2010-edition-part-iv-of-v/
Thank you to everyone who believed I belonged on the list and nominated me, and thank you to the MSPMentor team for putting this together.
Cheers,
bp
I ask this question often to smaller (1-10 employees) IT Service / Managed Service Providers that I meet. The most common responses I get are around something technical like their RMM tool, DR service or how cloud services are going to revolutionize their business and their clients are going to be equally excited about the fancy new kit. The problem with that logic is that SMB’s don’t care whether you’re using one RMM or another (contrary to what some RMM sales staff would tell you.) Would you care if your car mechanic used Snap-on tools or Craftsman? I didn’t think so…
I rarely receive an answer focused on business advisory services, costs or enabling SMB’s to be successful through the usage of IT. The truly valuable deliverable of your service is the end result you provide.
In two weeks I’m headed down to Ingram Micro’s SMBA conference to teach a 4 hour course on packaging and pricing an IT service offering. So over the weekend I’ve been working on my presentation and reviewing what really is important in our world of managed services.
Read my short list of questions after the jump…
While at CompTIA Breakaway 2010, I was fortunate enough to participate in a panel discussion on transitioning from transactional sales to a consultative sales model. My partners on the panel were Oli Thordarson, CEO of Alvaka Networks and Dan Wensley, VP of Partner Development for Level Platforms.
CompTIA put a nice summary of the panel discussion here: http://blog.comptia.org/2010/08/12/move-from-geek-speak-to-business-consultation-success/
(the nuggets for Oli and me should be reversed; they were misattributed)
It was a great discussion; I only wish we had more time to dig deeper into the topic. Read some additional nuggets after the jump…
I had a wonderful time at CompTIA Breakaway in San Antonio and will share some of my experiences shortly. In the mean time, here I am doing my best cowboy Schnizz. :)
Check out this great review of a night out I had with some TruMethods members after Schnizzfest 2010.
Thanks to Keira McIntosh for writing this.
http://thesupertaster.com/wordpress/2010/08/08/adventures-eulogy-philadelphia/
I’m travelling next week to CompTIA Breakaway 2010 in San Antonio, TX and not only will I be hanging around in the vendor menagerie, I’m also sitting on a panel Wednesday Aug 11 @ 12:30pm discussing Consultative Selling. I’ll be arriving on Monday along with Andrew Morgan, our newest TruMethods team member.
Look for Andrew and I if you’ll be there as well.
BBC News – Google drops Wave because of lack of users.
This is sad; I was really hoping that Google Wave would catch on. Slow adoption is one thing but there must be really no usage of the service for them to drop it. But in my opinion Google didn’t really do a good job of educating the market on why they should use Wave. I loved the technology but each time I logged on I couldn’t figure out why I would use it on a day to day basis.
I find it really odd they are dropping Wave. They haven’t invested enough time to really enact a fundamental change in the way we collaborated. On the other hand, maybe this was a solution that was looking for a problem.
In July we held our first annual TruMethods member event; Schnizzfest 2010. 63 companies from 5 countries came to Philadelphia, PA to work on moving their business and their life forward.
Here are some pictures from Schnizzfest.
Live Virtual Help Desk: Gaining Momentum? | MSPmentor Managed Services News & Blog.
My friends over at Live Virtual Help Desk are getting a lot of good press lately and for good reason; they enable growing Managed Service Providers focus their time and effort on more important things than answering the phone and triaging support requests.
What could be more important than answering when your clients request support?
