Moving off Break-Fix
If you are reading this, you are like me and have a small IT business that has been looking after several small clients. However, to grow, you realise that you must update the ante to provide professional services. This is the only way to grow is to transform your business from a one-person operator Break/Fix to a Managed Service Provider. The hard this is how to do you do it.
Three months ago, I started the journey. I will explain how I used my 3 biggest clients to lay the platform for a successful migration from Break/Fix to Managed Services.
A great client is worth gold
Don’t let your clients computers look like this
The first thing is honesty. All the clients I targeted clients had been with me for over 7 years a significant amount of Infrastructure. I felt that I could sit down with them and explain what I was trying to do with my business. that what I was doing would improve the already great support I was providing. The more I explained, the easier the decision was for them to move to a monthly arrangement.
I showed them what their current average spend was per month. Explained that for slightly more I could offer a much more robust system on a guaranteed monthly spend. It was ended up being an easy sale.
Play on their heartstrings – how many of us as full time, solo IT service providers have had a true holiday where we could turn our phones off and not worry about something going wrong somewhere. Implementing these systems will enable you to grow, hire people and provide faster response times. It is a win/win situation for all involved.
They are all business owners with staff, they understand the entrepreneurs desire to grow a business. You will be surprised by their response.
I found with these clients you must go in slightly under what you hope to sell your systems for in the future, but as long as you are covering the costs to implement the systems, it’s a great way to launch a new applications
Use the client for your UAT
All three clients were also willing to help me soft launch and test my Autotask PSA system. Just simply implementing these two systems physically showed them the better service I could provide them. In the first 3 months, I was able to show significantly improved response times and no downtime. All systems need UAT and with only you in the business, a receptive client is invaluable.
Not only that, with a robust ticketing system I could show them the amount of service they were getting in their monthly invoice. Using the integration from Autotask to Xero, the time spent invoicing was significantly decreased and my Invoicing was more accurate.
That said, it is hard work and long hours. A lot of the configuration is done after hours when you need to concentrate. As a solo IT Support person, we realise that days are spent putting out bushfires.
Put a picture of where you want to go for a two week holiday with no phone – that serves as motivation to keep moving forward for those of us that haven’t had a real holiday in years.