Is your managed service provider (MSP) prepared to take on a large revenue-generating customer or project? In other words, are you ready to profitably scale?
When you encounter conditions like these, you’re ready to outsource engineering talent and reap significant benefits, including increased productivity and cost savings.
Your service expenses are rising, but so is your revenue. After acquiring a new firm, you are unable to recruit qualified personnel. After employee turnover, it is impossible to recruit qualified candidates.You want to expand company hours to satisfy the needs of your clients.
But, regardless of the cause, hiring the correct third-party talent supplier is the first step. Here are some tactics and questions to ask a provider to help you choose the best one for your budget and requirements.
Define your requirements: Before you choose a service, you must first define your criteria. This includes determining the exact engineering abilities and experience required for their projects, as well as your budget and timeframe. Consider whether the talent provider must meet any regulatory or compliance standards.
Conduct extensive investigation: Conduct extensive study to find suitable providers. This includes looking over portfolios and case studies to assess their skills and experience. Check references and reviews from previous clients to ensure they’re respectable and dependable.
Begin small. Start with a little project to test the waters when outsourcing for the first time. This gives you the opportunity to assess the provider’s capabilities and approach without committing to a larger project and financial investment.
When evaluating potential talent providers, ask the following critical questions:
What is your background in working with MSPs? What kinds of tasks have you completed?
What are your core competencies, and how do they match our needs?
What guarantees do you provide and how do you ensure the quality of your work?
What is your pricing plan, and how do you handle extra work or changes to the project’s scope?
What is your communication and collaboration procedure, and how do you ensure transparency throughout the project?
What is your project management strategy, and how do you ensure deadlines are met?
Do you use our toolboxes?
How much responsibility will my team have for talent management? How much do you manage your talent once they’ve been hired?
Outsourcing engineering talent has numerous advantages for your MSP, but choosing the appropriate third-party talent source is important for success. You can identify the perfect third-party talent source to match your operational and budget demands by outlining your criteria, conducting thorough research, asking the right questions, and starting small.
The Essential Elements of Creating a Community Culture
When I initially arrived in America from India as an 18-year-old, I barely understood how to speak basic English and had no idea what a community culture was. Then, after receiving my computer science degree and launching my own tech support company in New York City, I had no idea how to operate a business. But I learned all those things over the course of 20 years as the owner of an MSP.
I also discovered that 40% of the American workforce is dissatisfied with their jobs. Why? Leadership challenges, as well as a lack of personal and professional development. Managers and a terrible culture drive people away.
So, I had to learn how to foster a sense of community. It was as alien to me as the English language itself. It’s a positive, healthy environment in which your team members may thrive. It’s a workplace where happy, engaged employees – both remote and hybrid – stay with your firm for a long time and leave a lasting impression on your customers, who become devoted brand ambassadors. The end results. Consistent business, more referrals, higher employee retention rates, and higher profits.
What I learnt about building a culture of community has been critical to my company’s amazing progress in terms of scaling and profitability since its founding in 2003.
I’d like to discuss the six factors necessary for developing a strong community culture, which I feel will benefit all MSPs.
Team First philosophy – MSPs must shift from a technology-centric to a people-centric mindset. Your team members are the heartbeat of your organization, so treat them accordingly. Make an investment in them. Assist in their education. Develop them become future leaders for the firm. Positive Attitude – Your leaders must try to always maintain a positive attitude. They can do this at team meetings, general conversations with staff, and so forth. If you build your teams so that they are positively engaged, they will have the desired impact on the client. It’s simple: happy employees = happy customers. Collaboration – Implementing efficient cross-functional team collaboration is critical, especially when dealing with remote and hybrid workplaces. My teams are distributed across several continents, but they work well together daily. Technology advancements have undoubtedly contributed to our achievement, but I also used other resources, such as The Collaborative Way, to better our collaborations.
Growth for all – I placed a strong emphasis on Career Development Plans (CDPs) for employee advancement paths, as well as building and deploying our own Team GPS employee management software. To keep team members, especially high achievers, satisfied, you must demonstrate how their efforts are critical to achieving the company’s goals.
Psychological safety is something I don’t hear much about, but it’s critical to give your workers the confidence to take risks in order to develop and transform your organization. Employees in a safe atmosphere can take chances and fail, but they should not be penalized for pursuing an entrepreneurial approach.
Winning and learning – Lifelong learning is one of my own hobbies that I’ve attempted to instill in my teams. Every day, I want my teams to learn something new. Everyone benefits from education. No one, in my opinion, is on a losing team; you’re either on a winning team or a learning team. Take an experience, reflect on it, learn from it, and use what you’ve learned so you can win the next time.
Building a community culture entail cultivating and maintaining a pleasant atmosphere that values engaged employees. Remember that leaders have a say in the type of workplace atmosphere they wish to establish. A vibrant culture draws great individuals, excellent leaders, and wonderful customers.
The “L” Word: Good Listeners Make Good MSP Leaders
Honesty, dependability, responsibility, passion, and other qualities that make good team players and leaders are always on the list. However, “listening” is rarely on that list. That’s unfortunate because being a good listener is essential for personal and professional development. Why? Because, contrary to popular belief, the true power is found in listening rather than speaking.
Consider the following two listening instances and how they affect your MSP business:
Listening to your Customers: Listening is essential for customer retention and how successfully your staff can triage support inquiries that arrive at your helpdesk.
Listening to your employees demonstrates your appreciation for them and aids in the retention of outstanding talent. Being a listening role model for your employees promotes their development in attentive listening, allowing them to become better listeners and possible future leaders.
There are two approaches that can help you and your team become better listeners. The first is personal, while the second is professional.
Listening to your Customers: Listening is essential for customer retention and how successfully your staff can triage support inquiries that arrive at your helpdesk.
Listening to your employees demonstrates your appreciation for them and aids in the retention of outstanding talent. Being a listening role model for your employees promotes their development in attentive listening, allowing them to become better listeners and possible future leaders.
There are two approaches that can help you and your team become better listeners. The first is personal, while the second is professional.
Personally, I believe…
Marcus Bond, a senior consultant with The Collaborative Way, stated in an episode of “Sunny’s Silver Linings” podcast that listening is a vital component of creating a healthy culture. And, as Marcus pointed out, culture “affects every aspect of the business because it’s a big part of how things get done.” He also discussed various listening issues you might have and strategies to overcome them.
Distracted hearing occurs when your mind wanders after about five minutes into a discussion, and you begin to think about something other than what the other person is saying. Or you start sending emails or doing anything else while ostensibly listening.
Solution: Strengthen your listening muscles and listen generously. Pay attention to when your mind “checks out” and “checks back in.” Do not multitask since it will divert your attention away from what is being stated to you. Train your attention to focus on what the other person is saying. If you missed something, kindly ask, “Can you say that again?” Then you must really try to understand what the other person is trying to communicate to you.”
Responding immediately: Many of us don’t wait for the other person to complete before responding because we feel – sometimes incorrectly – that we know what the other person is going to say. This quickly implies that you are not paying attention to this person.
Solution: After someone has finished speaking, pause. It may be odd at first, but take in what has been said and then react. Also, repeat or recap what the other person stated so they know you heard them and understood what they said.
Using “filters”: These are our perceptions of what another person is saying. This includes judgement filters (agreeing or disagreeing with the other person before they finish), personal filters (having or forming a bias towards the other person, such as “This individual is a rambler” or “I never liked this person.”) and the “I’m too busy” filter, which labeled the individual as unimportant to listen to or the topic as unimportant to you – even before the other person had fully expressed themselves.
Solution: Let go of the automatic judging and listen with interest and a genuine want to learn from that person – no matter who they are. They might have that one missing piece of the jigsaw that has been impeding your or your company’s growth.
In terms of professionalism…
With the prevalence of work-from-home opportunities and a dispersed workforce, we must use technology more efficiently to manage both the employee and customer experience. Keeping everyone engaged and assisting leadership in listening generously can only be accomplished with good data utilization.
For example, when we designed Team GPS, we envisioned it as a full-service business operating system that centralized your previously fragmented tools for engaging and retaining customers and employees. It is a platform for people. So, how exactly does it listen? By continuously getting feedback from consumers and team members and organizing it into an easy-to-understand structure, you can truly hear what they’re saying about your company, services, and people.
Team GPS gathers relevant data in one location and easily mines it to make informed decisions. If your team is dissatisfied, it will be shown in your Employee Net Promoter Score. CSATs will inform you if an engineer is having difficulty. It is the only software of its kind to depict the entire landscape of your employees and clients, allowing you to know when and how to act if problems occur, or to recognize and award individuals and teams for even the tiniest accomplishments. This demonstrates to them that you are paying attention.