MSPs are hot. Many have grown at an annual compounded rate of nearly 20%. Gartner expects total MSP revenue to double in the next five years to more than $500 billion annually.
Riding that wave, the people from Quoter made a pitch recently for their automated quoting platform to attendees on the showroom floor of ITEXPO 2023 in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.
Heavy competition for customers consistently ranks as the top challenge for MSP owners, according to Scott Bauer, Quoter's marketing director.
"The challenge is how do you capture that growth, how do you ride that tailwind," he said.
Quoter CTO and co-founder Mike Polga joined Bauer for the tag-team presentation.
"Usually when you get that contract canceled, it's too late," Polga said.
To help combat the issue of failed business relationships and continue to prosper, Bauer laid out three strategies that Quoter believes can help MSPs beat their competition:
- Get Your House in Order. Clean up your client database. MSPs tend to follow aggregate revenue numbers exclusively. "Not many people are thinking profitability at the client level," Bauer said. Become more efficient by automating your quoting and billing process, he said. "You shouldn't be spending twenty or thirty percent of your day sending our quotes," Bauer said.
- Fire Your Bad Customers. "What is the opportunity cost of a bad customer?" Polga asked. He says to axe your worst offenders and try to provide better service to your best customers. Polga pointed out two negatives that come from handling bad customers. First, it drives reputation risk because they're prone to complain. Second, handling bad customers has a negative impact on company morale, especially in customer service. Happy employees are more productive, he said.
- Put Customer Experience First. After two defensive suggestions, the team from Quoter switched to offense for their third quick-impact suggestion. Why put the customer first? In addition to helping maintain your current clients, running a customer-centric business leads to an increase in referrals, Polga said, Often, providing quality customer service comes down to response times. "At Quoter, our response time is minutes, not hours or days," Polga says.
As a bit of final advice, Bauer suggested that MSPs today are getting too far from the specialties they originally targeted. "Don't try to be a jack-of-all-trades as an MSP," he said. "Concentrate on targeted niche offerings where you know you can succeed."
Quoter, based in Vancouver, British Columbia, was founded in 2018. The company has more than 1,400 current partners.
Edited by
Greg Tavarez
