Risk reduction and creating a signature brand are essential steps in building a thriving business, no matter the industry. Despite this, many MSPs struggle to master these components.
Harold Mann, president of Mann Consulting, did exactly that on his path to $1 million. Here’s how he did it.
Risk Reduction Is Key: Internally and Externally
Risk reduction is a critical factor in any business. For Mann, minimizing the risk of employees stealing clients and customers leaving was essential to his MSP’s growth.
This lesson was one Mann learned early on, when a major client decided to move their IT in-house. “It was not something we had prepared for,” Mann says. “It was 40 or 45% of our revenue.”
Now, Mann is very careful not to put too many of his proverbial eggs in one client’s basket. “The most important graph that I look at, at the end of the year, isn’t top line revenue. It’s the percentage of our revenue that our top 20 clients make up. No one client is typically more than double digits; our largest client will be under 10% of our revenue,” he says.
When that same large client left, they also took three of Mann’s employees with them. “It created a desire for me to decentralize the business more,” he says. “Previously, we just let team members run certain client relationships, just like the old adage, ‘Hire great people and stay out of their way.’ But if you stay out of their way too much, it creates an environment where employees [aren’t getting much from your MSP] other than their paycheck. It feels like the customer is their employer, not you.”
After learning this lesson, Mann decentralized things substantially. “We separated more of the administrative work, such as scheduling, ordering, and logistics,” he explains. “That enabled our professional team to focus more on the technical work. That decision created a more siloed approach, more departmental—which can make for a poor customer experience, if you’re not careful. But it did create a situation where no one person was so integral to a customer relationship that they could take that client and run off.” Now, each client interacts with four or five employees, instead of just one.
Differentiate Your Brand with Consistency
Some MSPs overlook consistent service delivery as a differentiator, but it made all the difference for Mann.
“You never know where that next [major] client is coming from,” says Mann, recounting a story of an unassuming client who later became one of the MSP’s most profitable. “I want to make sure that, each customer, regardless of how big or small they are, has an excellent customer service experience. It would be very easy for us to just focus on the high-value ones. But I think if you treat every client as a potential intro to a huge opportunity, then it changes your approach. It changes how you deliver your service.”
Mann Consulting has over 200 SMBs that they take care of. But they don’t view each business as a client; instead, they look at a 30-person company as 30 clients. “They just all happen to be at that one company at the moment,” says Mann. “We meticulously follow up with [each of them] and try to make sure they have a good brand experience. [We see if] there is anything we could have done better. I learned early on that fixing a screw-up gives you a better opportunity to keep that customer for life than just delivering average or mediocre service.”
As his MSP grew, Mann transitioned from maintaining client relationships himself to focusing on operations. “I’m constantly trying to figure out how can we deliver reliable, consistent service in a way that’s going to deliver the quality. Brands do this at scale. When you go into a Chipotle or McDonald’s, you know what you’re going to get.”
To this end, Mann doesn’t allow his techs to work late or give out personal cell phone numbers—because not every tech is able to meet that standard. This way, he reduces the odds of clients requesting specific technicians to work with. “You don’t want [clients] to ask for so-and-so. That’s great for that employee, but what they’re really saying is, the service depends on who you get. Creating consistency in service delivery helps customers worry less and do less selection. [Instead, they’ll know] whoever you get from Mann Consulting is going to be good.”
Related: How to Differentiate Your MSP from a “Sea of Sameness”
“Complaining” Your Way to a Great Culture
The heart of any strong MSP is a great team—and the soul of any team is a great culture. Mann starts building his culture and team from the same place: the hiring phase.
“We hire kind people,” says Mann. “We’ve had to turn away at some really brilliant people who were just not kind. That’s impacted our talent pipeline a little bit. I would say our strategy on hiring is really just people who are willing to help others.”
One issue that Mann finds impacts both culture and efficiency is the amount of “hot potato” in IT. Tickets get passed from lower-level technicians up the food chain because they either don’t know how to solve them or are too lazy to deal with them, and more senior techs get annoyed because they’re getting passed password resets and other simple fixes.
“Make sure you deal with the hot potato incidents carefully. Move the complaining away from the water cooler. Instead, normalize complaining; get people to [talk to each other and ask follow-up questions]. [Having your team members] adopt that ‘curious, not furious’ approach to ask why certain tasks were escalated can turn these things into learning and growing opportunities,” Mann says. “[Senior] people in your company are really teachers and coaches for the more junior people—to help them be better. But if they’ve got a mindset of ‘I’m the senior guy here. Don’t give me that stuff,’ you’re not going to get there. You’ll just have departmental infighting.”
Looking for More?
Mann is full of expert advice, including insights into building a marketing engine, his focus on service-first marketing, and how he masters work-life balance. For more strategies you can add to your business, tune into Mann’s full guest episode on the My First Million podcast.
