In our most recent episode of the MSP Success podcast series, My First Million, Mike and Hunter Farlow of ComTech share crucial business advice, strategies, and marketing tips for MSPs that helped them break that million-dollar mark—such as consistency and a grade-A list.
ComTech is a family-owned and run MSP, with CEO and Co-Founder Mike Farlow working alongside his sons, Ethan (COO) and Hunter (marketing director), and wife Patty (administrative assistant). Though the MSP was founded over 30 years ago, it wasn’t until Ethan and Hunter joined the business—and Mike learned how to delegate—that the business really took off.
You Have to Let Go to Grow
A critical step of scaling your business is learning when to take a step back. There are simply not enough hours in the day for an owner to do everything; that’s why delegation is so essential.
It took 28 years for ComTech to break the $2 million mark. When they finally did, it was because Mike realized he could “trust [those] guys to do what they needed to do.” Delegating allowed Mike to break through his MSP’s self-imposed limits and begin to scale exponentially.
“We started doing actual marketing and treating the business like something we wanted to grow. It made all the difference in the world,” Mike says. “That is one of the big things I’ve learned since then—you have to let things go, if you can. If you can hire a marketing manager, let him run marketing. Get an operations manager; let him fine-tune everything. Let your service manager do his job. Go do what you’re good at. Don’t try to micromanage the whole business. All you’re doing is bottlenecking everything.”
Hunter agrees. He recently stepped into the marketing director role at ComTech, and has transitioned from creating and implementing systems, to hiring people to maintain the day-to-day functions of those systems.
“Let [the systems] go as you design them,” Hunter says. “Find people to fit the role, find somebody to do the function, and don’t micromanage it. Keep tabs on it, but move on. Keep going. It’s about getting out of your own way.”
The Biggest MSP Marketing Tip: Consistency
The most innovative marketing tips for MSPs mean jack without consistency. And to that end, you might have to kill your inner perfectionist when honing in on marketing. “I’m a perfectionist in some ways—excellence runs throughout our core values,” says Hunter. “At times, that’s a good thing. But you also just have to do it. You have to get started and just put something out. It’s not going to be perfect. Nothing is going to be.”
The other critical part of that is to keep going. “Once you start, don’t stop,” Hunter says. For example, “If you start sending emails to your clients, do it at the same time, on the same day, once every two weeks or once a month, consistently. Once you get more content, do it more often. But don’t do it once and wait two months to do it again. Be consistent, because that is the key to long-term success—consistent effort in whatever you do.”
ComTech is currently running a whopping 70 different direct mail campaigns, spearheaded by Hunter. When asked how he managed to get to that point, Hunter says, “It goes back to consistency. Decide what is going to become a non-negotiable for you. For me, that’s mailing and calling every week, a postcard every month, and an annual event.”
It’s All About the List
Good marketing starts with a good list, says Hunter. “I’ve learned over the years that the larger your list, the more you can do.”
By implementing a new qualifying campaign, ComTech was able to quadruple their list size—and vastly increase the quality of the prospects on it. Now, they have a list of around 2,000 prospects to send their many marketing campaigns to.
Once they established their list, the Farlows shifted their mindset. “[We] focus on how we’re different,” says Hunter. “Everyone has a problem; we could put a line in the water and hope to find somebody that way, but we emphasized how we’re different from our competitors.”
One of these differentiators is their rapid, one-hour response time, regardless of the reason for the call. “It really resonates with people when they’re [used to] going days without a response. We’re not necessarily better than any other MSP, because we all use similar tools. We’re just different.”
At the heart of this is the message, ‘Let us show you how we’re different.’ “We started focusing on that, essentially, and doing it to a qualified list,” says Hunter. “Then your message starts hitting the right people and it makes a big difference.”
We hope you found these marketing tips for MSPs helpful. For more expert advice from Mike and Hunter Farlow, tune into their full podcast episode here. Hear key takeaways on AI, automation, and customer satisfaction strategies.
If you missed our previous episode’s highlights, read how a hard reset helped this MSP hit 735% growth.
