Is your MSP ready for inbound marketing?
Recently, I was having a coffee with a fellow MSP marketer who built (and sold) his own MSP business. He didn’t build his business alone. He had a partner, who handled the technical side of the equation, while he managed...
Managed observability services will pick up steam in 2022
One of the biggest growth opportunities for managed service providers (MSPs) in 2022 will be the transition away from simply monitoring IT environments to providing true observability based on all the metrics, logs and the distributed traces that can be...
Ask an MSP Expert: How can my sales team get better at presenting?
Q: I have recently onboarded a few new hires to our sales team. One area I’d like to provide some training on is giving presentations to clients and prospective clients. Are there tips I can share to help them be...
Security is the foundation of an MSP’s relationships with its customers
Everything’s moving along quite nicely: your customer is happy with the service you are providing, there have been no significant service interruptions, costs have remained in line with inflation, and so on. The relationship between the MSP and customer is...
Sales & Marketing
Why most MSPs fail at blogging… and how to succeed
If you’re reading this article, then you probably know that blogging is something I’m very passionate about. At the time of writing this, I’ve got five pages of blog post archives to my name here on the SmarterMSP blog alone. I...
Ask an MSP Expert: An overlooked MSP marketing tool
Q: I want to grow my MSP business, but most marketing tactics appear to be outside of my budget. Do you have any ideas? MSPs have many tools at their disposal to generate new business: word-of-mouth, conferences, websites, trade shows,...
Podcasting for MSPs: It’s about the audience and guest
After recently sitting down as a guest on the SmarterMSP podcast, I got to thinking about how podcasting, and the revolution that is currently taking place all around us, is truly one of the most exciting marketing opportunities I’ve seen...
Security
2022 Cybersecurity Outlook, Part 2: Talent Gap, Ransomware, Healthcare
This week, Smarter MSP continues our discussion with Dr. Nur Zincir-Heywood, a cybersecurity specialist and computer science faculty at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Key discussion points include specific cybersecurity challenges Canadian businesses need to be paying attention to...
Getting smart about IT asset disposal and security
The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed a lot about the current state of corporate IT. One of those lessons was that many employees required new endpoint hardware. This was especially true in cases where older computers were no longer operational or...
2022 Cybersecurity Outlook: Stealth breaches, remote work, and human error
As 2021 comes to a close, Smarter MSP is talking with some of the best and brightest cybersecurity minds to take stock of the past year and get a sense of what to expect in terms of a cybersecurity outlook...
Better Business
Ask an MSP Expert: Should my MSP have its own company vehicles?
Q: I’m an MSP owner and business is booming. In fact, I’m planning on hiring two technicians to assist me in servicing customers. Should I have them take their own cars on service calls or should I purchase company vehicles?...
Smarter MSP’s top 12 posts of 2021
When reflecting on 2021, one thing is for certain: It was not a boring year. From new cybersecurity threats and vulnerabilities identified, to a ramp in digital transformation projects for MSPs, not to mention a continued global pandemic, and much...
Savvy MSPs never let a crisis go to waste
As Winston Churchill once wryly noted, a good crisis should never be wasted. A zero-day Log4j vulnerability that has roiled enterprise IT organizations, is only the latest in a series of cybersecurity incidents in the last year, that have left...
Tech Insight
Cloud spending recovers in the third quarter
Spending on cloud infrastructure returned to its previous rates after what appears to be a momentary period of indigestion. International Data Corp. (IDC) estimates spending on dedicated and shared cloud computing environments increased 6.6 percent year-over-year to $18.6 billion in...
Cybersecurity in 2022: What’s hot and what’s not
This week we feature an MSP’s perspective on what is hot and what is not with regards to cybersecurity in 2022.
Pioneers in Tech: Anita Borg, Champion of Women in STEM
In 1992, Mattel made a big mistake with one of its flagship products. Teen Talk Barbie featured a computer chip, with each doll programmed to say four of 270 phrases. One of the phrases was the ill-conceived “Math class is...