In the early days of my managed services business it was rare for us to walk in to a new customer and sign them to a managed services contract. It was much more common for us to engage them first on a break/fix level. Even on a break/fix engagement though we would do a simple network assessment and install our agent on the client’s network.
Continue reading Using Your Remote Management Tool to Increase Sales →

One of the key themes of the E-Myth book is that you must make the mind shift of being a computer guy that owns a business to that of a business owner who runs a computer business. The key distinction is how you look at your role within the business. The business owner is responsible for all aspects of the business, not just the technical work. Continue reading I’m A Computer Guy Not A Salesperson! →

I get asked all the time what the difference between my first computer business and the second was.  My answer, which usually causes a raised eyebrow, is the E-Myth.  This one book revealed in vivid technicolor the difference between owning a job and owning a business.  It was the difference between me abandoning my first business of 10 years and being able to sell the second after only 7.

Continue reading The E-Myth – You’re not just a technician anymore →

Pricing Models
Many people ask me how I priced my managed services offering. There are about as many ways to price your offering as there are MSP’s. I will try to give you some ideas here to help you come up with your own pricing based on the way you run your business. Read as much as you can though from other sources as well because there are many different pricing models to consider. Continue reading How I Priced My Managed Service Offerings →

An article I wrote for the AllThingsMAX blog in June 2014…

Have you ever wanted to know when someone installs or uninstalls software from a computer that you are responsible for managing?

Read More: http://www.allthingsmax.com/2014/06/did-i-do-that-watching-for-software.html

An article I wrote for the GFI MAX I.Q. blog in June of 2014

Service Level Agreements can be a serious subject for many MSP’s. While SLA’s are common in medium sized businesses and enterprise environments, they are not so common with smaller customers. This doesn’t mean you should ignore SLA’s if your client base is smaller. Whether you provide formal SLA’s or you just want to make sure you are delivering a level of service that meets your standards, monitoring Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) for service delivery is critical to maintaining customer satisfaction.

Read more: http://www.gfimax.com/max-iq/structure-sla-delivery-using-servicedesk/#ixzz37TLhHzoq

An article I wrote for the AllThingsMAX blog…

In my past experience as an MSP it was not uncommon for us to get a phone call that a customer’s PC was down and when we got into diagnosing it we found that the machine had “blue screened” many times in the days, sometimes months, before the customer called.  So the question is how do we, as service providers, find out about these events when they happen instead of waiting for a total failure? 

Read More: http://www.allthingsmax.com/2014/05/what-about-those-blue-screens.html

An article I wrote for the GFI MAX I.Q. blog in May of 2014

Any business that delivers a product or service must keep track of their inventory in order to be profitable. For the managed service provider this can be difficult because their primary inventory resource is technician time.

Read more: http://www.gfimax.com/max-iq/capturing-lost-revenue-service-desk/#ixzz37T1xZ4rw