When Clients Call You Their MSP and mean “Major Strategic Partner”
When clients engage a service provider, certainly they’re looking for technology expertise, but they need it in the context of how it best serves their business.
When clients engage a service provider, certainly they’re looking for technology expertise, but they need it in the context of how it best serves their business. Top IT service providers (ITSP) have realized and today provide as much strategic management consulting as they do technology consulting. Those seeking assistance look for both. Those looking to provide both must be sure they’re ready.
Let’s start with an “author’s note.”
Every writer who publishes here on Substack knows each posting is referred to as a “newsletter.” That’s what Substack calls them, and they’ve oriented everything around that.
Part of the reason I’ve chosen to publish on the Substack platform is that it gives me the freedom to provide the kind of content I’m known for. I’ve always had difficulty crafting my words to align with the needs and preferences of advertisers or sponsors. I wanted the freedom to write for you, my readers, rather than for them.
Even more concerning to me since the days when I was managing ITSP companies is that most of the industry publications publish nothing much more than news. Who did what to whom? Who’s acquiring or merging with whom? What were the results of recent legislation?
All of this is very important, to be sure, but most of these publications are missing the one thing I always wanted most when I was a reader, advice. Guidance as to how I can make my business better. Strategic insight and food for thought. Not a feature in many of our industry’s publications. Others, who welcome this kind of content, are the ones I continue to write for.
Obviously, when I launched into being a commercial copywriter fourteen years ago, I wanted to provide the same value I sought as a consumer of this content. I wanted to give my readers plenty to think about to help them develop their business strategies, just as I had helped my clients apply technology in strategic ways for several decades.
Now, smacking headlong into my work being categorized as a “newsletter,” I wasn’t sure how to express the difference readers can rely upon here. I’ve developed a solution, and ask that you please tell me how I did:
Business Technologist’s Journal – The MuseLetter
Muse [ myooz ]
verb (used without object), mused, mus·ing - to think or meditate in silence, as on some subject.
My goal is always to give readers things to muse about. Strategic thinking. Because that’s what we sell today, strategic assistance in how to most effectively improve business operations through the strategic application of technologies.
So, welcome to my museletter.
Making MSP Mean “My Strategic Partner”
While those of us who are hopelessly hooked on technology itself do spend time musing on the latest emerging offerings, and where we can take them, those who are practicing Business Technologists must spend as much or more time musing their clients strategic challenges and how they can help solve them.
My observation has been that those ITSPs who survived and thrived in the aftermath of disasters like 9/11 and the 2008 economic collapse were the ones who had strong strategic relationships with their clients. The ones who perished were those who depended upon nothing more than price and delivery to keep their clients loyal. They had little or no real knowledge of their clients’ business. Put another way, they represented little or no unique value to their clients.
Your Sustainable Competitive Advantage (SCA)
One of the most difficult things to do, and one of my favorite exercises to do with my clients, is to clearly identify and define your company’s sustainable competitive advantage. That’s the one thing that sets your company apart from the competition. It’s nowhere near as simple as you may think.
In my client exercise, I have their team in a room and I ask them to identify what they think is best about their company. This usually fills walls with flipchart pages. At the end of this stage everybody is feeling really good!!
Then, in stage two, I point at each quality they listed and ask if it is something that can only be said about their company and none of their competition. Items like “we’re totally committed to customer satisfaction” are scratched out instantly. What company isn’t?
If we’re lucky, when we’ve gone completely through all the flipchart pages we are left with only one or two listings out of the dozens or hundreds we started with. At the end of this stage, everyone is spent. Much of the time we scratch all of them. Ouch.
Here’s a hint: In the IT industry it is all but impossible that your sustainable competitive advantage will have anything to do with technology. Customer Satisfaction is another area where its all but impossible that nobody else rivals you. What is it that is so special, so different about you?
Hint: Your Clients Will Love if Your SCA is Strategic Consultative Value
Clients know they can get everything cheaper. There’s always a catalog house or an online seller they can get what they need from quickly. That’s not magic.
Every client probably greets the end of each deployment project wondering whether they did the best thing. Should they have approached this challenge another way? Were there other ways? Better ways? Better ROI? Better TCO?
To avoid those questions ever occurring, or to answer them if they do, you need to know a great deal about their company, its operations, its customers, its market, regulatory issues, everything. Ideally, you should be able to readily discourse with their CEO. Many of your colleagues do.
How Do You Learn What You Need to Know?
The simple answer is to find people within your clients organization and take them to lunch. Ask your questions:
Why does your company do things the way they do?
What is the company’s mission, goals, focus, purpose?
Who are their customers?
What does success look like for them?
How do they compare to their competition?
What are the business challenges that will need to be resolved now and soon?
Who is responsible for IT, IS, communications, security, etc..?
Have they implemented DevOps? DevSecOps? AIOps?
Approach learning their business as if they had just employed you and you wanted to be poised for rapid upward mobility. In a very real sense, that’s where you are. For you, mobility means more work and more partnership.
The Best Way to Become Their Hero
Nobody ever became a hero for selling their client a great firewall. Or a network attached storage system, or any other piece of computer hardware or software.
The fastest, most direct way to become your client’s hero is to clearly contribute to their bottom line. That’s vivid! That registers! And if you’re contributing to their bottom line, they’ll gladly keep contributing to yours.
One great sign that you’re heading in the right direction is when executives from your client company call you to ask for advice. To bounce some ideas off you. To get your “take” on something.
CIOs went through this metamorphosis over the past decade or so. Many never felt they were a real part of the “C-Suite” and, as a result, the shelf-life of the average CIO was about six months.
Now they have become strategic members of that leadership team, as steeped in the business strategy as they are in the technology and making sure the one supports the other. This, too, can be you.
PLEASE feel free to offer up your techniques for becoming a strategic partner to your clients. Just add them to the comments and let’s see where that takes us!