While new clients are the lifeblood of most businesses, one of the often overlooked parts of a successful MSP (or any business) is squeezing the most out of each client you already have while ONLY adding the RIGHT new clients.
DigeTekS
Producer Club member Brandis Kelly, President of DigeTekS, spent much of the last year maximizing the value of his existing clients, which is a faster and more profitable path to success than adding high-value clients. This resulted in revenues of $3,895,464 (a 43% increase over 2022) and profits of $1.15 million! Here’s how she did it, in her own words…
No Experience, No Problem
Back in 2013, I had a close friend running a Kansas-based MSP approach me about helping him with organizational structure and leadership. He had a team of five at the time and was struggling to manage the business, the people and the systems to grow. I thought, “Okay, sure. I could help herd the cats,” so I accepted the challenge.
Initially I started out helping with a few projects, but within six months, I was promoted to VP, and within no time at all, I ended up being president of this new empire.
The point is, you don’t need a degree or exceptional background in business, marketing, sales or even the tech industry to succeed. What you need is a willingness to be what Robin calls a “serious student,” as well as a solid work ethic and a commitment to follow the process she gives you.
3 Commitments That Led To $1,899,464 In Revenue Growth
We ended the year of 2020 at $1,996,000 in revenue, and grew to 95% to $3,895,464 by 2023 – a massive growth for a three-year period. But that wouldn’t have happened without three fundamental commitments we made to making Robin and TMT’s process work.
- A dedicated marketing person: If you’re going to grow your MSP fast, you need to hire a dedicated marketing person. If you don’t have one – it’s on YOU. And while that can work initially, if you want to see results fast, you need to hire help. I was the marketing department for a previous MSP I worked for because we didn’t have anybody on staff to do marketing, so it IS doable. But in 2020, I had learned that trying to do it all myself would only slow us down, so we hired the best marketing admin in all the land, Brayla. I’m happy to report she’s still with us today. If you’re new to hiring marketing personnel, look for someone who’s a “doer” and has a great work ethic over someone with a ton of marketing experience.
- Owner “buy-in” to the TMT way: You cannot follow the recipe if, at every turn, you’re told to remove an ingredient or swap for an off-brand or cheaper component, creating a recipe that tastes like shit. I would argue that without owner buy-in, you’ll waste money, thereby increasing the odds of the owner(s) NOT buying in. Having owner buy-in is just insanely critical because some things may not make sense in their mind or have an instant ROI. Direct mail marketing is a great example of that. You don’t send out five ducks-in-a-box and expect five leads and five clients. That’s just not the way it works. You need an owner who allows you to be consistent and knows the process will work if you stick with it.
- Do the process yourself (at least for a while): Robin says, “Delegate, don’t abdicate,” but we hear stories all the time about owners who join membership and then tell their admin to go through the training and “make it happen.” If you have an owner, manager or someone in the C-suite, go through the process and learn it with them because it’s so much easier to understand. I’ve done it all, start to finish. I have hand-addressed envelopes. I’ve made the calls. I’ve cleaned the list. You name it, I’ve done it. And once you’ve done it, you know what you’re looking for when hiring and how to train the new person on how to do the job RIGHT.
You Don’t Need A Lot Of NEW Clients To Add $195,882 In MRR
In the past year, we really doubled down on what we were great at, while making incremental changes and improvements to critical functions, such as sales, marketing, operations and service delivery.
One of those things we’re great at here at DigiTekS is doing technology business reviews (TBRs), sometimes called quarterly business reviews. Before joining TMT, I didn’t even know what a TBR was, but now I’ve got a process in place that is truly excellent.
When we sit down with our clients, we focus on their needs, not our own. We don’t talk about tickets, don’t get into the technical weeds and we certainly don’t try to just sell them things or make billing changes. We actually dive into three-month, six-month, nine-month, one-year, three-year, five-year planning, budgeting and execution. We create an IT plan, or Roadmap, to get them where they want to be over the next three to five years, along with budgets and recommendations to fuel their growth.
Thanks to this process, we’ve been able to not only grow revenues but retain four of our largest clients who have experienced massive growth in the last couple of years. If we were not growing with them and conducting regular TBRs, it’s very likely we would have lost those clients to an MSP that was doing what we do in a TBR. Obviously, those clients have added a lot of MRR that would not have been secured if we were lazy or lacking in our quarterly meetings with them.
We even do TBRs a few times a year for clients who aren’t on a fully managed service plan. The TBR process builds trust, fosters relationships and finds opportunities for us in projects. This year alone, we had three of those clients convert into fully managed service agreements.
We had a client who was spending about $3,000 a month with us on tools to manage their infrastructure. They were doing their own IT management, but we kept in touch and kept asking them how we could help. Starting in June, they went full-blown managed services and are now at $14,000 a month. That was a big chunk of added MRR! It’s not new, but it’s added MRR.
Last year, we added a total of $195,882 in monthly recurring revenue and over $700,000 in project work. Only about $16,000 of that came from seven new clients, with the rest coming from current clients and our TBR process. Sometimes you just need to focus on the business you already have with the high-value clients.
Now We’re Going Full Throttle On New Client Acquisition
- Website With C.A.T. Factor: Our enhanced “Robinized” website now prominently displays our industry and elevates our “C.A.T. Factor” of celebrity, authority and trust. The new “As Seen On” header, featuring logos of major media outlets, immediately establishes our credibility, while our awards footer reinforces our expertise.
- Direct Mail And Phone Prospecting: Earlier this year we launched a direct mail campaign similar to the infamous “Bad Date” letter and campaign: “Is Your Current IT Provider Mr. Right Or Just Mr. Right Now?” We offered two free hours of support to prove we’re not like the other guys. This was followed by phone calls, an e-mail sequence and LI connection requests.
- Monthly Newsletters And TechTip Postcards: We have 1,717 combined prospects and clients receiving our monthly newsletter, and after we’ve finished scrubbing our newest location, we’ll add another 500 to our Farm List of qualified prospects.
- Joint Ventures (aka…Homey Hookups): This year, we teamed up with two of our larger banks to reach their clientele. We held four different Lunch and Learns, sponsored in part by the Chambers we joined as well. We also partnered with an insurance agency that has sent us both a client and a prospect. The one client was $3,925 in MRR and $57,500 over the life of the contract. The prospect that we are front-runners to win is a 100-seat medical facility, roughly $20,000 in MRR and an additional $20K in project work in the first year.
- Webinars And In-Person Events: We did a cyber liability insurance webinar with our Insurance JV, and we held two different in-person sessions for cyber security training. One was at a restaurant, partnered with a local business group that meets monthly. The other was at a school for the teachers and employees.
- Ramped-Up Social Media Posts: Our social media engagement strategy saw remarkable success with a dramatic increase in our online presence. Through a combination of interactive posts, along with celebratory promotions for various National Days offering free treats like coffee and cookie, our page clicks increased from 14 to 2,475 in under a year, while new fans grew from 7 to 188, highlighting the success of our enhanced approach to attracting and engaging our audience.
Train Them Well Enough That They Can Go Anywhere, Treat Them Well Enough That They Don’t Want To
That’s me, probably misquoting Richard Branson. But the fact is, you can’t make a million dollars in profit without a good team. Focus on your team, treat them like real people, listen to what they say and take the feedback. You don’t have to do everything, but you do have to actually listen and implement. Even if you’re the owner, you don’t know everything. You do have to continue learning, and you learn from your team.
