Smb Community Podcast By Karl W. Palachuk

This SMB Community Podcast is the sixth in a six-part series entitled Go To Market with Remote Support Service, with Dave Sobel, Senior Director of MSP Evangelism at SolarWinds MSP. Dave starts out this episode focusing on using the Take Control tool as a way to differentiate yourself from other service providers. More specifically, he has a great analogy about the place of Take Control in your offering. Rather than “selling” this tool, bundle it with everything you do and sell the total service. Reporting is a huge component in that differentiation. You can generate a lot of information per-client and per-user. These are great for showing clients what they’re getting for their money. Plus you can access recordings of all sessions, track time, and provide the client with regular tracking information. Even if they never look at these reports, they’ll think it’s cool that you offer them. The recording option is particularly nice. You can record to the cloud. You can share these recordings with clients. You can

This SMB Community Podcast is the fifth in a six-part series entitled Take Control and the Customer Experience, with Dave Sobel, Senior Director of MSP Evangelism at SolarWinds MSP. In this episode, we touch on many features of the Take Control tool designed to help you improve and manage the Customer Experience with your technology consulting business. Some of these features are built in (and configurable/customizable). Others come into play as a result of agreements or policy decisions you make with the client. Offline options = Create business-focused policies. e.g., what is “privacy” at each client? Work with the client to help them to create their employee-facing policy regarding monitoring and privacy. And of course you can agree on the level of reporting that clients will receive. In fact, you can use this to help the client set policies about which software you are authorized to uninstall and what kind of reporting they expect regarding their employees’ computing habits. Dave mentions that you can se

This SMB Community Podcast is the fourth in a six-part series entitled Episode IV: A New Hope for Security, with Dave Sobel, Senior Director of MSP Evangelism at SolarWinds MSP. As you might imaging, the Take Control application from SolarWinds MSP has lots of security built in. In particular, we talk about all the little security-related details that many people don’t worry about. This includes securing endpoint connections, clipboard access, passwords, and more. Dave gives some good information on the two-factor authentication you’ll experience within Take Control. All that is paired with an authenitcator app that uses unique one-time-use passwords that are managed automatically. If you think about it, a remote control tool gives your staff total access to all client secure data. And with multiple sessions into multiple clients, someone has to make sure that all those sessions are independently secured – and secured from each other. Take Control builds all that security in from the start. We also talked to

This SMB Community Podcast is the third in a six-part series entitled Successfully Implement Your Cloud Service Bundle, with Dave Sobel, Senior Director of MSP Evangelism at SolarWinds MSP. For six episodes, we’re talking about how to get the most out of your remote control tools – and make more money. I really wanted to include this discussion of implementing cloud services in this podcast series. As you may know, I am a huge advocate of bundling your cloud service offering in order to maximize profit and client stickiness. So, we start off with a discussion of setting up the agent and creating default configurations. Here’s the bundle we are discussing:   After that, Dave walks us through mass deployment. This is a very cool feature, and one that you might expect from a remote management tool. Dave also goes into detail about customizing your “terms of service” within the app and protecting yourself legally. After all, remove control of client systems is a very serious undertaking. You need to agree with c

This SMB Community Podcast is the second in a six-part series entitled Break-Fix vs. Managed Services, with Dave Sobel, Senior Director of MSP Evangelism at SolarWinds MSP. For six weeks, we’ll be talking about how to get the most out of your remote control tools – and make more money. Right off the bat, you might think that Dave and I would wave our hands and dismiss Break/Fix as a business model. But the truth is, there are still lots of people making money with “on demand” or “as needed” tech support. It is the right solution for some clients. It’s also a great way to get started as an IT solution provider. So we start out with our definitions of both break/fix and managed service. The next question is, how do you maximize revenue with the break/fix model? As Dave says, you have to figure out how to use your time as wisely as possible and bill for as much of your time as possible. And even though tools like Take Control were developed to help MSPs make more money by leveraging their time better, they also

This SMB Community Podcast is the first in a six-part series entitled Remote Control Deep Dive: Build and Grow Your Business, with Dave Sobel, Senior Director of MSP Evangelism at SolarWinds MSP. For the next six weeks, we’ll be talking about how to get the most out of your remote control tools – and make more money. Here, Dave talks about the core features of the SolarWinds MSP’s Take Control tool. These include one-to-many scripting and recording the control session. Take Control was built specifically for the SMB market. As Dave says, this is not an “enterprise” product watered down for SMB or a home product stretching to be the right solution. Dave gives us a long list of questions to ask when you go shopping for a remote control tool. And, finally, Dave covers billing. After all, the bottom line is the bottom line. He covers some of the key elements of squeezing as much money as possible with the right remote control tool. And of course he touches on the questions of security, performance, and managing

This SMB Community Podcast features my brother Manuel, discussing his new Agile Service Delivery philosophy and training. Basically, Agile Service Delivery applies the principles of “agile” to the industry of managed services. As Manuel says, we stop managing people and start managing the work. One of the big weaknesses of old-school service delivery is that MSPs are taught to schedule, schedule, schedule until the schedule is full. The problem with that is, the schedule turns out to be a huge line of dominoes, stacked and ready to fall. When the schedule is packed so tight that it squeaks, it only takes one small problem to mess up the whole day – and potentially the week. Agile Service Delivery takes a different approach, based on priorities rather than schedules. The best news, according to Manuel, is that you don’t need a new PSA or other tools. You already have the tools you’ll use. It’s your processes that need to change! Check out all the details in the interview below. Manuel also announced his new Ag

This SMB Community Podcast features Nigel Moore from The Tech Tribe. Topics include his community, crazy selling prices for MSPs, and a great discussion about building culture within your IT business. I always enjoy talking to Nigel. I met him just over ten years ago and am happy to still be doing things together. Of course a person can only take so many trips across the ocean in a year, so we do most of our collaboration online. In this interview, we talk about our respective communities (The Tech Tribe for Nigel and Small Biz Thoughts Community for me). After that, we talk about several aspects of selling a business and the crazy valuations we’re seeing for MSP businesses in the U.S. At last we get to the topic we were scheduled to talk about: Building culture in your business. The rambling and spontaneous nature of this interview is exactly why I love working with Nigel. He’s super smart and talented. He’s one of those few “coaches” who can speak on any topic and give some great advice off the cuff. NOTE:

Jennifer Fields of Astek Marketing has been helping out with my SMB Roadshows this year. She implements marketing programs for managed service providers. Jennifer has been helping MSPs for more than five years. She’ll help you build a list, clean it, pre-approve it, and “warm” it so that people know who you are when you contact them. If you’ve purchased a marketing program such as Robin Robins’ Technology Marketing Toolkit, Jennifer’s team can implement it for you. When you buy a program like that, you know it’s awesome and amazing. But YOU don’t want to build the list, print the postcards, send the mailing, and make the followup phone calls. Jen wants to do that! Listen to the interview. If you have questions, contact her!   Web Site: www.astekmarketing.com   Watch the video podcast: This interview is 30 minutes. Audio Listen to the Podcast.  

I had a great interview with Josh Peterson of Bering McKinley (https://beringmckinley.com) about the state of our industry and what small IT consultants need to be paying attention to. Our first topic was actually unplanned. We just started talking about what we’re seeing as we travel around the country and meet MSPs. What we’re both seeing is a frenzy of M&A (mergers and acquisitions), fueled by an influx of investor capital. In fact, Josh has a couple of great stories about crazy (high) valuations. I make the point point that YOU can take advantage of the mergers as a time to get new clients. When companies are in the throes of gobbling, combining, and figuring out what to do next, there’s a period of chaos in which their service delivery plummets. And you might be able to come in and say you’ll give these clients the attention they deserve. This 30 minute interview touches on the Managed Services in a Month Peer Teams, the different challenges of small IT companies and large, weeding your client garden

Stephanie Chandler is a long-time friend and mastermind partner. We are happy to announce our first book project together – The Nonfiction Book Publishing Plan. Between us, we have almost thirty books. But Stephanie also runs Authority Publishing, so she has experience publishing many more books, focused on almost any audience you can think of. You can learn more about Stephanie on her Speaker Page or Wikipedia. She has been a driving force in the writing community worldwide, and particularly in Northern California. She is the founder of the Nonfiction Authors Association, with chapters all over the globe. On top of all that, Stephanie runs the Nonfiction Writers Conference. The Fall Conference will be held online November 8-9. More details at https://nonfictionwritersconference.com/. (I am honored to be a speaker at this event.) So, with all that going, I don’t know how she found time to talk to me on the SMB Community Podcast, but she did! After helping each other with thousands of business ideas and projec

Frank Bravata is a technology expert, serial entrepreneur, public speaker, best-selling author, podcaster and Veterans’ supporter. He works as a business technology coach assisting companies all over the country to fuel their explosive growth through technology and digital marketing. He is also the president of MSP Speakers, a training firm dedicated to assisting MSPs to become the authority in their marketplaces and to leverage public speaking and group-based selling to massively grow their companies. In this SMB Community Podcast, I talk to Frank about how you can get started as a speaker – promoting your business services from the front of the room. In the video, Frank mentions a free report you can get at https://mspspeakers.com/. He also has a webinar coming up. You can learn more about that at https://mspspeakers.com/webinar. Frank is also member of the CompTIA (www.comptia.org) Committees on IT Support and Cyber Security, helping to develop policies and standards to protect companies worldwide. He has

Gil Cargill is a sales trainer and coach. In this interview he talks about the importance of business-focused communication during sales calls. Too many technicians thing clients care about technology. They don’t. They care about how you can improve their profit, improve their productivity, or help with cashflow. Gil gives some great tips on how to get the conversation started, and to get the prospect to buy in to a productivity audit. His approach is very conversational and is totally focused on the client rather than the technology. Gil gives his email in the video. I’ll just list his web site and phone number below.   Links Mentioned: Web Site: http://www.gilcargill.com Phone: 310-447-4102 Check out the interview here:  This interview is 30 minutes. Listen to the Podcast  

James Kernan is a business, “success,” and sales coach. He has owned and built some very successful managed service companies. This SMB Community Podcast with James Kernan covers “Gamification” within Your MSP. How do you motivate employees, make their job fun, and improve your success? Coach James Kernan gives you his best tips. This includes his five points to keep in mind as you look to “gamify” goal setting within your team. Note: The handout mentioned is linked from the SMB Community Podcast blog post is HERE in PDF format. That handout is on financial goals and KPIs.   Links Mentioned: Web Site: http://www.kernanconsulting.com Check out the interview here: This interview is 30 minutes. Listen to the Podcast  

Doug Hazelman is the VP of Technical Marketing at Cloudberry. We talked about Cloudberry’s cloud backup options as well as their managed service reseller program. (I didn’t know their cloud agents could be deployed with many RMM tools.).   About Doug Hazelman: Doug is a software industry veteran with over 20 years experience including 9.5 years at Veeam Software. He was on the executive team at Veeam and also helped spearhead Veeam’s community and technical evangelists efforts as well as provided insight into product strategy. Doug has held various management positions at other software companies throughout his career. He graduated with a BS in Computer Science from Western Illinois University with a minor in marketing..   Links Mentioned: Forum: https://forum.cloudberrylab.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/cloudberrylab Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CloudBerryLab/ Blog: https://www.cloudberrylab.com/blog/   Check out the interview here:   This interview is 30 minutes. Listen to the Podcast  

I interviewed Ramey Bell from Tech Reputation – www.techreputation.com. Tech Reputation automates the process of getting reviews posted on the major review sites. They also have a process to alert you to potentially bad reviews and help you intercept those reviews so you can potentially turn them around. Tech Reputation was founded in 2017 by Ramey Bell, an IT professional with over twenty years of experience in marketing. Ramey has owned and operated a computer repair shop in Oak Harbor, Washington for the last six years, using those marketing skills to grow his business. He found that having an automated system in place to capture positive reviews led to improved word-of-mouth referrals and increased revenue. Fully understanding the time limitations all IT owners face, he decided to offer an automated service and marketing system that enables owners to quickly understand their current reputation and manage all of it from a single place. Google pays attention to about fifty sites that publish reviews. Tech R

I caught up with my brother, co-author, and fellow coach recently. It seems odd to interview my brother, but I have massive respect for Manuel. In addition to practicing a work/life balance that few achieve, he is a true master of process control and an amazing business coach. Manuel Palachuk You can find out more about his coaching programs at www.manuelpalachuk.com – and more about our ChannelPro shenanigans at https://events.channelpronetwork.com/. We start with a bit of a deep dive on coaching. Many people don’t know exactly what they want from coaching. All they really know is that “stuff” is broken and they need help. Manuel explains how he uses and “agile” approach to help companies identify goals and make quick changes to move in that direction. We also covered mergers and acquisitions in the SMB space. Most important statement in this interview: Companies in the middle of a sale or acquisition are consumed by chaos for six to twelve months. That means you might have an advantage for a period of tim

I had a great interview with Nigel Moore from My Technology Business (The Tech Tribe). Nigel Moore Nigel joins us from an hour north of Sydney, Australia. He tells us the story of how he sold his managed service business AND maximized the price by creating standardized processes. Great line from this interview: When you move the sale from simply acquiring clients to a strategic buy, then the prices goes way up! Last year Nigel launched the “Tech Tribe” community – officially My Technology Business. His community provides a wide variety of resources, including video trainings and downloadable templates. In this interview, Nigel walks through one of his favorite forms – a client screening to determine whether or not it’s worthwhile to take on a client. . . . Plus stories and a lot more. Enjoy!   Links Mentioned: Web Site:  www.mytechnologybusines.com Membership Info: www.thetechtribe.com Special Offer: www.thetechtribe.com/karl – including a speed coaching call!   Check out the interview here: This interview

Harry Brelsford In this SMB Community Podcast, Harry Brelsford from SMB Nation gives us an update on the latest and greatest from his world. Highlights include the Spring SMB Tech Talks (Topics include Blockchain and Bitcoin), Life-long learning, new analytics courses from Microsoft, and an update on “Pivot” marketing program. Harry finishes off with a quick summary of his hottest five tips for marketing online in the SMB Community.   Links Mentioned: Web Site:  www.smbnation.com SMB Tech Talks: http://unbouncepages.com/msptechtalkspring2018/   Check out the interview here: This interview is 30 minutes. Listen to the Podcast  

If you’ve attended an ASCII Success Summit in the last few years, I’m sure you’ve run into Herman Pool from Vertical Axion (www.verticalaxion.com). If you haven’t attended an ASCII Sucdess Success Summit – You Should! Visit asciievents.com for more info. Vertical Axion helps Managed Service Providers with a variety of marketing programs, including building customized web sites. They also provide syndicated content for your web site – and promote those posts on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. They also help with SEO. In this interview, Herman talks about some of the pitfalls small businesses find with SEO. Herman also has a great book called One Hour Marketing. I’ve linked to his site so you can find out more. Best advice snippet: Don’t build your Internet presence on Facebook!! That’s like building on rented land. :-O   Links Mentioned: Web Site:  www.verticalaxion.com Herman’s Personal Web Site: www.hermanpool.com   Check out the interview here:   This interview is 30 minutes. Listen to the Podcast