Dell Channel Blog

Today I sat in on the first day of Dell’s MSP Partner Advisory Council and listened to Tricia Wurts of Wurts & Associates, a private consulting firm, speak on the present and future for MSPs. Tricia started off with some current statistics on the market, which included:

• By 2012, 70% of North American companies will be leveraging some remotely managed services –Gartner
• Only 7-8% of resellers have targeted mature MSP businesses (a total of 5,000 – 7,000 in North America) – MSP Mentor
• Some lead MSPs are targeting 70-80% revenue from annuity stream services or fixed remote managed services – Wurts & Associates

Even in these hard economic times, MSPs are less impacted than other business models. Essentially, MSPs are carrying the “IT Channel forward”. While MSPs are moving on, smaller organizations will obviously be more impacted along with sales cycles becoming longer as well as slowing business growth in some cases.

Tricia asked those MSPs in the room how they’re weathering the economic woes as of late and what tactics are they doing to survive. Here are their responses:

• Work up the food chain and talk with CEOs and higher management. Sell up the organization.
• Have your solutions become more efficient. Change your value proposition and look at the costs that you can shift.
• Become a solutions architect.
• A personal touch is a must. You are more disposable the more non-personal you are.
• Formulate clear strategies to win a bigger piece of the business with top 20% of clients.
• Know their business inside and out.
• Deeper penetration including desktop.
• New/Add technology solutions offered in managed services model (add non-commodity to grow volume driven MS offerings).
• “Intimacy reviews” that allow for soft selling.
• Position and measure green impact.

What tactics are you using to survive in this economic downturn? Let us know what is working for you and what tactics you would like to know more about.