The Best MSPs Focus on ROI First, Last, and Always
The reason customers invest in your technology services tells you everything you need to know to succeed.
Please Note: Once again this is a particularly long post, so subscribers will find the emailed version of this issue cut off at the end. Please go to the web version for the complete version.
If You Find AgenticMSP Valuable: Please recommend AgenticMSP to your friends and colleagues. Also, please offer up your comments, observations, questions, or any other responses in the chat below. Let’s get a hearty conversation going!
Why do customers invest in technology in the first place? And why do they invest in your services?
The answers are far simpler than we may make them.
Why Customers Invest in Technology
To make a return on their investment (ROI).
Why Customers Invest in Your Technology Services
They trust that you understand and will help them achieve that ROI.
We Could End This Right Here
If you already embrace these two answers you can probably just stop reading right here and jump down to today’s top MSP AI News.
I’m actually quite serious about that. The most successful MSPs I have encountered over the years are the ones who are driven by customer success mainly defined as customer ROI.
There was a terrific writer named Mack Hanan who coined the term “consultative selling” which many of us have embraced over the years. In his book, Consultative Selling: The Hanan Formula for High-Margin Sales at High Levels, Hanan explains the difference between being your customer’s vendor and being their partner, explaining, “vendors ask for an order, which represents a cost to their customers, while consultants offer improved profits, which represent a gain. That’s the whole distinction in one sentence; cost versus gain.”
Net net, when a customer knows your objective is to increase their profit, they’re more than happy to help you increase yours.
What Does This Mean to AI
“Companies Traded People for Tokens. The Returns Haven’t Shown Up” is the title of the first article in today’s MSP AI News below. Your customers are bombarded with news about the billions and trillions frontier AI model makers are investing in new data centers, chips, development, energy, and more. They’re now hearing more and more about how those people have finally woken up and asked themselves the key question: “How are we going to recover all these costs and show a profit?”
And part of the reason this is happening is their lack of recognition as to why customers invest in technology. More and more reports are coming out about how companies are not seeing return on their AI investments. That first article points out that some of these companies have realized their operating costs were lower when they had people doing what they now use AI for. Using AI simply costs more!
So, while they should be asking themselves, “How do we help customers achieve increased ROI?” They’re busy asking, “How do we increase our own profits?”
Many are predicting that we’re going to see the answers very soon, and it is not going to be pretty. Expect to see consolidation, acquisition, perhaps even some closures and ugliness.
