IT Provider Network - The Podcast for Growing IT Service Providers Terry Rossi - MSP and IT Business Coach

If you're like me you started 2020 or Q1 for that matter with a list of initiatives you need to accomplish in your business. For us, we follow the 3HAG and Gazelles methodologies, so our 3-year initiatives get broken down to our annual goals which become or quarterly priorities.







Somethings these priorities are to support the company, a division, a department or even a specific product or service. Whatever the objective is we always want to make sure that everyone is rowing in the right direction and that the objectives are really moving the company forward.







Do your initiatives really move your MSP forward?







Last week we had a leadership meeting and set out to do just that. See if our rocks in 2019 really "stuck" and made a lasting change in the company. I don't think it was entirely surprising but most of them didn't. And that's what I want to talk to you about today. 10 things you should think about before launching an initiative in your company so that you can have a better chance of really moving your MSP forward.







[INTRO]







Defining your Rocks







Of course, I don't know your planning process but when we decide to move forward with something in the company, we have, in the past, set about it by documenting the priority with the following header type data: Let me give you an example.







The title or subject of the priority: Improve operations and scalability by assessing and improving PSA configurations and processes.







Why is this a top priority?: We are seeing that reactive tickets are taking too long to get resolved and we want to move to a dispatch type process for the helpdesk.







What possible roadblocks do you see?: Techs are used to working from the service board, and now they will be working solely from their calendar. This might be a difficult change.







What are some potential side effects from this?: Clients may not like speaking to a dispatcher since they are used to going direct-to-tech. This might cause some unhappy clients.







From here we flesh out the priority with milestones and indicators of success. This concept of milestones and indicators of success confused me for quite some time but through observations of my own team, I think that right-brain people are better with the indicators of success and left brain (analytical) people with the milestones. So what are milestones and indicators of success?







Milestones: Milestones are points along the way of the project or priority that needs to be accomplished so that the end goal can be met. Think of milestones as the important tasks or events needed to accomplish the project. These are typically assigned to dates so that the priority can be completed within the timeframe.







Indicators of Success: This is how you know you are successful in achieving your goal with the priority. We have indicators of success in the "yellow", "green" and "super-green" levels. This corresponds loosely to the good, better, best type of achievement for a priority. Start with the end in mind when you think of your indicators of success.







Once we have our priorities, rocks, initiatives defined and an owner assigned, we score them weekly. We score the achievement of the priority as it exists today and our forecasted score for the end of the period. Quarterly if this is a quarterly goal. We score 1 to 4 with 3 being on track and good and 4 being exceeding expectations.







New and Improved for 2020 - The 10 Questions you need to ask before moving forward







This is what we have done for the last several years until last week's meeting w...

Show notes to follow







Ask your questions or share your feedback

•Comment on the shownotes below

•Email feedback@itprovidernetwork.com (audio files welcome)



Get on the mailing list

Low Volume by it is THE PLACE TO BE for all of my insider information. If you're on the list, you'll be the first to know. Signup Here



Tell 'Em I Sent You

If you investigate or purchase any product or service that I have talked about, please remember to mention that I sent you. I may or may not get a small commission but more importantly I hope to spread the word about the IT Provider Network.

Please Subscribe

Please consider Subscribing to the Podcast it is the only measure of listenership I have.



Give me a Review

Your written iTunes reviews encourage me and they help other people find the podcast.

If you appreciate the information you are learning from the IT Provider Network then please do me a HUGE FAVOR and write a review on iTunes or on Stitcher!

Connect with Me

On the socials as @TerryRossi or @ITProviderNet



Help a Brother Out



* Sign up for Coinbase

* Buy something from Amazon with my Affiliate Link



I put these down here in case you are looking for anything from Amazon, I get a small commission if you click-thru from this site. You don't have to buy these items just click through from this page. Thanks in advance!

If you don't follow Jay McBain from Forrester Research, you should. Not only is he a thought leader in our industry and a really nice guy but if you don't follow him you would have missed his recent article The 64 Best Channel Podcasts Of 2019 where the IT Provider Network was listed among the best of the best.







It was really ironic because I just saw Jay present at Marketopia's 4U2Grow conference in Clearwater last month. Jay actually did two presentations but his first one blew me away and I want to share with you my takeaways from that talk on today's episode of the IT Provider Network Podcast.







Before I get into Jay's talk which was entitled "Achieving Extraordinary Success in 2020 and Beyond" I have to tell you that even before Jay added The IT Provider Network to his article about the best 64 Channel Podcasts I was going to tell you about this research because it blew me away. Honest Jay I was!







As I said Jay was one of the speakers at the Marketopia 4U2GROW users conference. If you have never been to a 4U2GROW conference I encourage you to attend next year. It is a really intimate event at a world-class venue with great speakers like Jay McBain,Terry and Andra Hedden, Manual Palachuk and Erik Simpson.







If you aren't familiar with Marketopia, they provide the channel (MSP's and Vendors) with Marketing and Appointment Setting services.







For full disclosure, I am a client and they gave me a Partner of the Year award. Having said that, they kill it for us with leads and that's why we use them.







Back to Jay's presentation - I could never begin to do it justice but never the less it was so eye-opening that as soon as I was back at the office I attempted to present it to my management team. Here were my big takeaways.







* Buyers have changed - they are much more educated about what you are selling before you even speak to them. The playing field is much more leveled and in fact, buyers might know more about your offering and how it fairs in the marketplace that your salespeople do. Google is the great equalizer and buyers are making much more of the buying decision before they reach out to us. What this means to me is we all need to do a better job of getting in front of buyers BEFORE they have a need. Be the one they think of and can find on Google because 68% of them prefer to do their own research before talking to a salesperson.* A whopping 65% of tech buying decisions are now made by business leaders, not IT. What we used to call shadow IT and look at as a threat is now becoming the norm. Line of Business leaders are now sourcing their own solutions or demanding specific solutions from IT. What this means to me is we need to expand our marketing relationships with our clients and prospects. No longer is it enough to build a relationship with the owner of the company, you need to expand your definition of the buyer and cater to all of them...uniquely.* 80% of tech buyers report that the salesperson is NOT specialized enough. Wow, that means in our buyer's eyes we are not getting it done. We need to work harder getting our teams up to date on the ever-changing tech landscape, cyber, compliance and everything else we profess to be the "expert" in.* Jay also reported that 96% of MSP's are unable to scale past 10 employees, and although Jay didn't report it, I know almost that same percentage can't scale past 1 million in annual revenue.







The presentation went much deeper into these stats as well as the state of the channel,

Information on upcoming training from Tony Robbins, Dean Graziosi, and Russell Brunson - Live April 30th

One of my favorite Peter Gabriel songs is "Kiss that Frog"  and today I want to urge you all to start each day by kissing that frog ... although I pretty sure my advice is a little different than Peters.

The dreaded Task List

You know all the things on your to-do list that never seem to get done?   The stuff you push off every day because something more important gets in the way, or at least that's what you keep telling yourself and your co-workers, clients or employers.



These are the frogs I want you to kiss.



In our company, we have an accountability sheet We call it the "WWW" sheet.  WWW stands for who, what and when and it is the way we monitor tasks that need to be done to move our company forward.   Most of the tasks relate to the 6 core functions in our business.    By assigning a "who" and a "when" to each "what" we make someone accountable to the task and we have assigned a deadline to it.



The problem is some of those who, what , whens never seem to get done.



They get discussed each week during our huddle and the due date gets pushed out further and further but they don't get done.



Since this is happening in the senior leadership team, the creme de la creme in our company,   I'm sure it's happening in team meetings throughout the company and that sucks.  Wasted time and agreed upon priorities not getting done.



These hard to accomplish tasks, whether they are personal like getting a haircut, or an oil change for your car,  or business things like giving a performance review, or calling a client to tell them you are sorry for a mistake you made.   These are the things I call frogs.  I call them frogs because they are things we don't even want to touch.  We move away from them and try to avoid them at all costs.

Kiss that Frog

Imagine for a minute that you really had to kiss a frog,  imagine it was on your WWW list.    You had to give it a big wet 3-second kiss.



You'd probably put it off as long as humanly possible, schedule it out for a year in the future.     If you had a year to do it you would probably do it on day 365, the very last day of the year.    It's human nature we put off what we don't want to do till the last possible moment.



Think about it,  when you finally forced yourself to kiss that frog, you'd pucker up and give it a big long wet kiss right on the slimy skin of his back.

What would happen?

You'd probably freak out a bit, spit and complain LOUDLY, but it would be over in a minute, well really 3 seconds TOPS!  3 seconds that you spent 364 days agonizing over,   A year of stress for something that took less than a minute.



When it comes to things we don't want to do, agonizing over it is almost always worse than actually doing it.  Once you kiss that frog, you're a little freer, you have less weight on your shoulders and you are free to move on to the next thing without the burden of kissing that frog hanging over you.

 Better get a new notebook!

I can help you fix this problem but you better get a new notebook because I bet if you're like me you have hundreds of frogs to kiss.



You see the way these things work is that we constantly procrastinate on all of lives burdens and they build up in our minds.  We carry them around like heavy luggage every day.



I know you don't think you have 100 open items on your internal to-do list but I bet you do!  I might even venture to bet you have twice that and that's a lot of weight to carry around.   These little things add up and bring you down.