Last week MSP Today discussed the fact that managed service providers don’t always know as much about business, sales especially, as they do technology. The advice was to fine tune MSP sales techniques.
Vendors themselves are helping out. GFI has an entire Web site devoted to MSP marketing tips and tricks.
N-able, now owned by SolarWinds, also wants to help and this week announced what it calls the MSP Playbook.
The playbook, N-able claims, is a comprehensive resource that helps MSPs build full business plans, and offers assistance managing the business once it is up and running. It covers how to grow, business best practices and how to provide customers with top-notch managed services.
It also covers the basics of setting up a network operations center (NOC), which gives MSPs more control of what they offer.
Although this is not the actual cost, the company places the value of all this help at some $50,000. While that sounds like a lot for what is essentially an eBook, making sound business decisions can have incalculable value.
“N-able's MSP Playbook is a tell-all reader's guide for becoming one of the world's most successful MSPs,” says Mike Cullen, senior vice president of sales with N-able. “With the MSP Playbook we've documented and detailed everything an MSP needs to know and do to establish, grow and scale a profitable services practice and deliver 100 percent IT coverage with ease, efficiency and measurement.”
This isn’t the only way N-able helps MSPs. It already offers its MSP Business and Technician Runbooks, two eBooks, the first of which is all about how to create an MSP business, the second focused on the technology.
N-able is now owned by SolarWinds which shelled out $120 million for the privilege.
N-able’s main tool is N-central which takes over much of the grunt work involved in network management. N-central is console based, and from that single view can manage multiple networks at multiple locations.
N-able is popular amongst MSPs because they can reach out to client locations easily. In fact, it is largely sold as a service through partners, although the company recently began promoting an on-premises option.
N-able also offers MSPs service automation tools.
Want to hear (and see) directly from N-able? Check out the MSPToday interview below.
Edited by
Alisen Downey
