Sometimes you have to start from scratch to get to where you really want to be.
Nathan Drager, president of Quantum Technologies, knows this better than most. He broke free from years of nearly flat growth by radically altering his business’s structure, joining an MSP peer group, and revamping their marketing strategy with a killer MSP mailing campaign. And it’s already paying dividends—last year, the MSP ended with about $4.4 million in revenue; this year, they’re on track to hit $5 million.
Drager says their focus is doubling down on their current trajectory and growing from proven formulas. Here’s what’s working for them right now.
A Major Mindset—and Business—Shift
Right now, Quantum Technologies is in the process of moving away from residential services, zeroing in on managed services clients—and restructuring the business to do so.
This major transition began not with a shift in business model, but in Drager’s mindset. “This is something I’ve dreamt about for a long time,” Drager says. “I’ve always said that the residential work is 90% of my headaches.” Now that Drager has brought in enough high-value clients to prove to himself he can make the MSP model work, there’s nothing holding him back. “Why would I spend any more time trying to get these low-value clients?” Drager says. “When we won that first [MSP] client, that made it obvious that that was the direction we wanted to go in.”
Drager’s shift in mindset and goals was heavily influenced by the TMT peer group he joined. “It’s influenced by leaning into the training, taking it seriously, and trying to be a leader and top performer amongst my peers,” he says. “As a business owner, there’s not much more exciting than when you try something new, put a ton of hard work into it, and it works better than anything you’ve done before.”
“In a career that goes on for 10, 12, 15 years, it’s sometimes hard to find something that reinvigorates you and brings that passion back out. And it’s not just me as the leader, it’s [the team that’s] making it happen and getting these deals.”
Stepping away from the low-value clients bogging down his business has allowed Drager to provide better service to the managed services clients he wants to focus on. “[There are so many] things that I’m able to do, now that I’m not trying to help everybody with everything.”
A Quantum Leap Forward
To support the massive shift from residential support to the MSP model, Quantum Technologies is undergoing major restructuring and departmental changes.
On the residential side of the business, Drager is looking to completely sell that book of business, then move employees from the electronic repair work they’re doing to more professional roles on the managed services side, such as desktop support.
While Quantum Technologies had thousands of clients (including their residential customers), their contract renewal process was extremely disorganized—until now. “We’re going through a big evolution with contract automation,” says Drager. “We had a lot of customers that had contracts with not much depth to them. So we’re revisiting how people get their contracts, when they get renewals, what the contracts look like, and how we ensure we have a contract on file for every customer—just safeguarding our existing business.”
From Scattershot Marketing to Laser Focused
The MSP’s biggest change has been their marketing overhaul, says Drager. He likens their former approach to a shotgun blast—wide and untargeted. “We were doing newspaper ads, TV ads, billboards, radio magazine ads … anywhere we could try to get our name out there,” says Drager. Since joining TMT, they’ve canceled those contracts. “We’re spending those dollars on something measurable, like our mailing campaign. We’re burning the whole thing down and rebuilding it in real time.”
That’s not the only major change shaking up Quantum Technologies though. “We have a sales department and a CRM now; we never had those before,” says Drager. “We’re focused on attracting those high-value clients, getting the right people in front of them, getting those sales to the finish line, and moving them into account management. Those are all new ventures for us.”
“We had several thousand customers, but we never worked them into a list,” Drager says. “We weren’t doing anything automated; they just came to us when they needed us.” Then, “We started automatically emailing them—sending them cybersecurity tips and checking on them—and that has been the most influential thing we’ve done to grow this business since I started it.”
The MSP has already seen great success from their first round of 500 letters, part of their new lumpy mailer campaign—a strategy that centers on mailing odd-shaped or bulky letters to prospects, with the intention of standing out from their regular mail. From that first round, Quantum Technologies has already scheduled 35 first-time appointments, with several more in the process of converting.
Success on the Horizon
Quantum Technologies currently has 175 managed service customers and roughly 1,000 break-fix clients, which Drager hopes to convert to managed service customers. “If they’re convertible, I’ll convert them,” says Drager. “Otherwise, I’m out prospecting, looking to add to that managed service customer [list].”
For more MSP success stories, read how PROTELI achieved success by focusing on client outcomes.
