By Mike Cullen, VP – Worldwide Sales and Business Strategy, MSP, N-able by SolarWinds

Keeping customers is every bit as difficult as winning them. To excel at both pursuits in the SMB space, MSPs must know who their customers are, what makes them different from larger companies and how they can solve their current and future needs.

As an MSP, you should have a broad arsenal of technical and business skills to apply to each SMB customer. From my experience working with hundreds of MSPs and thousands of small businesses over the years, I can tell you that the most successful MSPs do four things superbly well.

• They focus on the business relationship;
• Provide excellent service;
• Harness their strategic thinking; and
• Show their flexibility at all times.

It’s a lot to tackle, but here’s how they get it done:

Focus on the Business Relationship

SMBs typically need and want a trusted advisor. Somebody who will listen to their technology and business concerns, know their market and can provide expert hand-holding and guidance. Often, SMBs lack the knowledge to determine what they want, and lack the in-house expertise to keep up with the latest technology innovations and trends.

As an MSP, you must be able to do it all for SMBs. However, to do it all you must focus on satisfying the unique business needs of each customer. Selling to SMBs is never just about the technology, but it is always about building one-to-one relationships.

Provide Excellent Service

Providing excellent service -- value for money -- is essential to your success with SMBs. Each SMB requires different levels of service, often highly customized. For example, an SMB might want you to manage all its devices except employees’ tablets -- going against your best practices’ advice. Your response must be: yes, we can do that.

The cookie-cutter service approach of large service providers -- designed around rigid SLAs and scaling up -- just doesn’t work with SMBs. When an SMB customer calls you with an IT problem, he/she typically wants you to fix it right away either over the phone or in person.

Harness Your Strategic Thinking

Increasingly, SMBs require MSPs to be a lot more than trusted technology advisors and providers. They want you to provide them with strategic thinking that supports their business plans while meeting their technology service needs.

SMBs need you to take a strategic view of their business because they simply cannot do it themselves or cannot afford to do so. They want you to be their virtual CIO, who can assess strategic IT issues versus operational ones, recommend best practices for being reactive and proactive and see the ‘big picture’ of their business.

Be Flexible at All Times

Flexibility should be one of your key assets. You should be willing to create the precise solution that a customer requests, while ensuring that it is cost effective and highly reliable. At the same time, you should make yourself and your team readily available to answer any questions and solve any technology problem as quickly as possible.

‘Flexibility’ may not appear on your business card but it should be front and center when it comes to your approach to managing your SMB relationships.

Mike Cullen is vice president of worldwide sales and business strategy for N-able by SolarWinds. He brings over 20 years of corporate sales experience to his MSP customers, and has assembled an equally experienced sales force that lives and breathes partner success. Prior to joining N-able, Mike was vice president of sales (Ottawa Branch) and interim president of the Québec region for IKON Office Solutions.