Here’s How to Find a Good MSP or Computer Consultant if You’re a Small Business a
Hi. I'm Max Clark. I'll give you some tips on how to find a good MSP or computer consultant if you're a small business. And this is actually geared towards, like, the lower end of small businesses. So probably you don't have IT staff in house yet, and you're trying to figure out how to bridge that gap between maintaining your current operations and supporting your business as you grow.
Speaker 1:This is advice that I've given to a lot of companies. I give this advice being somebody that started working for an MSP or a consulting company supporting small businesses to midsize enterprises. I've also run an MSP, and now I I help companies find MSPs for their businesses all the way from SMBs to large enterprise companies. Okay. Enough about me.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about you. There's a couple of decision trees you have to think about with this. And the first one is how do you find somebody that's good? And how do you know if they're good? Someone really gonna work on those things.
Speaker 1:And by the way, I'm gonna give you a big secret, and there's a big big tip coming at the very end of this one. So how do you find out if they're good? Well, here's the trick. The really good MSPs figure out standardization and scale. And as they standardize and as they scale, what they learn very quickly is they don't wanna deal with small companies because it isn't worth the headache.
Speaker 1:The amount of revenue that's can be captured from them from a really small business as a client, it's the same amount of energy and work as if they were just going up market. So they still have to acquire, capture, sign a contract, put engineering resources out in sight. So this is one of the big problems with SMBs and especially in the small business size is when you're in that SMB size, you're in this like low margin high headache world for the MSP. And so the MSP doesn't really wanna deal with you too much. So here's what we do.
Speaker 1:First thing you do is you just open up Google Maps. It sounds crazy, but this is a key. Open up Google Maps, put the pin right where you're at, and you just wanna Google search IT consultant. Google search managed services provider. Google search.
Speaker 1:Now if you're using Windows desktop or if you're using Mac desktops you can put you know make a little more specific say Windows consultant or you know Google search Macintosh support. The reason why you're doing this is you're looking for companies that have an MSPs that have progressed to the point where they actually have a marketing program in play. They're taking the time and energy to develop and invest in marketing and SEO and, you know, Google My Business, Google Local Search. These things usually always come way down the pipe for most businesses. So you're looking for companies that have already taken the step.
Speaker 1:Now if you find somebody and there's no data, there's no profile, there's no reviews, there's no information. It's a it's a listing that was created 5 years ago and never updated. You know, that's a data point you wanna take into consideration. Right? Maybe not a good fit for you.
Speaker 1:Maybe not a company you want to do business with. Maybe, maybe not. But this becomes your search target. You're looking for companies that are in your region, in your area that are relatively close to you, and that's where you start from. Again, be specific based on what kind of computers you're using.
Speaker 1:If you're using Mac, you want to search for Mac consultant. If you're using Windows, you want to search for a Windows consultant. They are different. They have different skill sets. They have different support infrastructure.
Speaker 1:They have different software that they're going to want to deploy and run for you. Make sure you're looking for the right thing. The second thing you're going to want to be aware of is if you're running Google Workspace or if you're running Office 365, you know, usually if you're on Google Workspace, and if you're on Windows, you're gonna be an Office 365. Although, you know, we see plenty of people on Windows are on Workspace and plenty of people on Mac that are on Office 365. But just pay attention to that when you go out and do that.
Speaker 1:Okay? When you talk to an MSP, the questions you wanna ask them are, how many engineers do they have? What do they support? Now if they tell you they support everything, it could be scary. You know, this is one of those jack of all trades, master of none kind of things.
Speaker 1:Now it's not necessarily a bad thing. It's just something you wanna understand if they come back and they say all we do is Windows or all we do is Mac or all we do is fill in the blank. Right? And if you have if you don't what you're looking for is you're looking for have they developed their business into a point where they actually understand what they're doing and that they focus and specialize on something or have a practice area around something? Do you meet and do you fit that mold of what they're currently doing or not?
Speaker 1:You know, obviously, if you're running, you know, if you're a Mac shot with Google Workspace and you call an MSP and there are Windows and Office 365. Right? Like, that's a good thing. You I mean, just qualify them on the phone. Right?
Speaker 1:It's just not a good fit for either of them. You wanna know how many engineers they have. Ask it flat out. How many engineers do you have? How many technical resources do you have in your company?
Speaker 1:I'm not saying that a company that has 1 or 2 or 3 engineers is bad. I'm saying that you want to know if they have 1 or 2 or 3 engineers versus 10, 12, 15 engineers. The reason why this is important is the lower the number of engineers, the more tax they are going to be for resources. If they lose an engineer, the more critical it's gonna be for their business. If somebody is out sick or has an accident, the more impacting it's going to be for you.
Speaker 1:If there's a lot of companies having problems at the same time, where do you fit within the priority list of getting support? You know, if you're a 5 person micro business and you find a really good consultant and it's like 2 people, I mean, that might be a great fit for you because you guys, you know, collectively are on the right spot. But just I make this point. You wanna know what it is. Now, once you cross, call it like the 10 engineer line, these are where companies have been around for a long time.
Speaker 1:They've really developed. They've got a good sales and marketing motion in place. They have a good hiring and retention. They've got training. They've got authorizations.
Speaker 1:They've got all these different things that come into play. And so these are things that you want to know. By the way, you also want to understand, is it all their employees? Is it all their own W-two employees? Are they subcontracting with another support entity or another company to provide support?
Speaker 1:And again, this is totally fine. Maybe you find out that they're doing a certain type of tier 1 or remote support you know augmented via another company. Totally fine. Not knocking it. Just know the answer and understand whether or not that's gonna be good for you.
Speaker 1:You wanna ask them what their ticketing system is. Again, this is just a sophistication of the provider. Are they running an integrated ticketing and asset management and dispatch platform? You know, ServiceNow ServiceNow is a complicated deployment for an MSP to go through. If they've gone through the process of deploying ServiceNow and are integrated on top of it and they're running the toolset, that's really interesting.
Speaker 1:That's good to know. It gives you a lot of information about what they are and how they are as a company. You want to know what their engagement structure is. You're gonna see different types of billing models that could be pure time and materials. There's gonna bill you hourly when they do work for you.
Speaker 1:They could charge a minimum fee to dispatch to you. They could sell you a block of hours at a discount just using round numbers. If it was $150 an hour, maybe they sell you a block of 40 hours for $100 and then you work against that 40 hour block that they have. And then when you get down to the bottom, you know, they'll be talking to you about replenishing it. They could be it could be a retainer system.
Speaker 1:You could you could pay a certain amount of money every month for either a certain amount of time or a certain amount of service. And then above and beyond that becomes something else. I'm not making judgments about which one is right or which one's wrong for you. I'm just saying these are the questions you wanna ask. That way you know what they are.
Speaker 1:You wanna understand what their scheduling and dispatch processes. If you have a problem and your system is down or you can't open up your email or you can't print, you can't get on the Internet, What is the process to actually get somebody on the phone, get somebody in your office, diagnose and fix the issue? Not necessarily in the telco space will say MTTR MTTR. By the way, MTTR is a bastardized term. There's multiple acronyms that apply to it.
Speaker 1:In my case, I'm using mean time to respond, not mean time to repair. So, you know, you have an issue that when you call, how long is it gonna take before you have an engineer on the phone? Do you have a number that you dial into that you can get an engineer right away? Will that engineer be able to help you? Do they have tier 1, tier 2, tier 3 support?
Speaker 1:How do they do dispatch? Is a different engineer being dispatched? Is a person you're talking to doing the dispatch? All questions you want to understand and you want to look into. You also want to find out whether or not they have an RMM solution remote management solution.
Speaker 1:RMM is great software that they could be using to install on your devices so onto your Windows PCs or your Mac desktops that allows them to remotely connect to your system and help you diagnose and fix the problem. Now on the very low end, maybe that's just team viewer, you know, very simple software. But again, as you get into more sophisticated MSPs that have integrated ticketing and asset management system, the RMM will be built into it as well. And, of course, you know, you've you've looked them up in Google Maps. You wanna know, you know, I mean, do they have reviews?
Speaker 1:They not have reviews? How many reviews do they have? Are they positive reviews? You should ask for references, not because anybody's ever gonna give you a bad reference, but you wanna see how easy it is to get good references out of a company. If you ask for somebody for references and it takes them days or a week or a week and a half to get you somebody that will be willing to talk to you about their service, that's an interesting signal as well.
Speaker 1:Service providers that have good relationships with their clients, their clients that really love them and wanna support them, there'll be somebody that they can get on the phone pretty quickly for you and give you a glowing reference. I mentioned I had a little tip and trick. I had one more little secret here for you. As your business grows and as your business scales, when you cross at that point where it makes sense for you to bring somebody in house and you have to go out and you have to make your 1st IT hire, that first IT hire person is going to be a desktop end user device general support specialist because that is gonna be the majority of work that you need to do. You're probably not gonna have sophisticated applications or sophisticated cloud platforms.
Speaker 1:What you really have is you have a collection of employees. You have a collection of users. Those users have devices. You have some productivity suite. You know, again, Office 365, Google Workspace.
Speaker 1:For the most part, you have relatively basic stuff. Right? And here's the trick. And this was taught to me by a client years ago, and it's a genius trick and pun intended. If you're on Mac, for instance, go down to the Genius Bar and hang out and start talking to people.
Speaker 1:If you've got Mac desktops and Mac laptops and iPhones and etcetera, the people working for Apple at the Genius Bar have been trained by Apple. They are supporting general consumers coming in. Customer service has to be top notch. They have dealt with crazy situations you know that they can deal and handle and give good customer service to people coming in right so this is what you want you want somebody that can diagnose a problem that can provide a fix to the problem that can be a support infrastructure for your company, and that can also be and, you know, I have good bedside manner, you know, to your team that needs help with their devices. And when this was pointed out to me, it's it's again, it's a genius idea, and it's something that I've used ever since.
Speaker 1:And I know people that exclusively hire even for Windows environments, their entry level IT teams straight out of Apple Genius Bar because it gives them a relatively established baseline of experience and expertise they know they can build on top of. Now if you're running Windows, don't expect an Apple genius to be able to dive right in and diagnose Windows issues, you know, just by default. Right? You're going to have to do a little bit more screening. And do they know Windows?
Speaker 1:They not they have experience with it. Do they not? I mean, you're going to figure deeper into the weeds. But if you're running Mac, it's a great option. It's something I've seen successfully done many, many, many times.
Speaker 1:I'm successfully done many, many, many times. I'm Max Clark. If you have any questions, drop them in the comments below. We'll get back to you.
