What can you Learn from Self/less about MSP Marketing?

Before you judge someone walk a mile in their shoes, because then you are a mile away and you have their shoes. Imagine if you could trade places with a customer, employee, or a boss for one day. Sometimes you may want to just be as far away from them as possible. What did you imagine this day to be like? This movie in its twisted plot of a billionaire that transfers his consciousness into a healthy body after being struck with cancer. Switching bodies shows us that it’s important to understand one another’s perspective to achieve a healthy relationship and common understanding to help MSP marketing grow your company. (more…)

This movie pits man against monkey in the turf war of the ages. In the movie War for the Planet of the Apes the apes, facing an enemy that is much more developed than they, will have to win this war with their wits. One of the most important lessons Emperor Caesar teaches the apes is that they can’t take the humans one on one because they are obviously outgunned. “APES! Together STRONG!” is Caesar’s powerful war cry. Being one of the most basic lessons MSPs can learn from this by understanding this concept is vital for any functioning team. And what is a company but a team. What exactly can you learn from our primate cousins about running a business? (more…)

Emma Stone and Jesse Eisenburg star in this Zombified sci-fi flick. These two and their unlikely team will have to work together to survive the undead hordes in their path. But the question is, what does my IT marketing have to learn from this? Though we may not have the undead scratching at our door, our MSP marketing team must fight zombies daily. These zombies come in the form of syndicated blogs that are eating many unsuspecting companies alive.

Google’s AI bots and crawlers that maintain the job of analyzing website pages and utilizes the links provided to create a web throughout the internet. Most MSP marketers realize that blogging is essential for ranking by Google’s bots and crawlers. Their solution however isn’t always in your best interest due to many of these MSPs posting syndicate blogs over a variety of clients. These syndicate articles have no real value to them to Google’s bots and are synonymous to balloons filled with air compared to balloons filled with helium or rather, original content. Google’s AI will crawl your webpage and will analyze links to create a web between websites, but duplicate articles will be marked “no find no follow” which is essentially invisible to the site crawlers. These syndicate articles act as mindless zombies to Google that are hungry to rise in rank.

Lock and Load!

The ammunition to survive this horde of undead is original content. Google has no real content of its own and to understand Google you must understand that they want what is best for their customer as the leading search engine. This means that the AI is searching for the most relevant and updated information which can be created through blogging, hosting guest blogs, and maintaining website activity. Though the zombies are strong in number they will not be individually challenging so if you keep your gun loaded and your guard up you will prevail. You win more flies with honey than you do with rotten flesh!

In your MSP company, you will encounter different types of people. You have your employees, partners, suppliers, competitors, clients, and prospects. Somehow, business people especially those in sales, tend to stereotype the people they meet at work. And here lies the error of many MSPs. They only cater prospect customers who fit the ideal client look and they take no notice of or give much importance to other prospects who do not look dignified enough to afford their services. If you are guilty of this, then you must consider the Jar Jar Binks Sith Lord Theory which is making rounds on the web. (more…)

Wouldn’t it be great if your MSP business would have the same box office success as the movie Karate Kid in 2010? Though there was nothing new to the story line of the reboot movie from the original film except for the change of setting, the actors who played the characters, and that the martial arts used was Kung Fu instead of Karate, moviegoers still loved the movie. (more…)

You need to streamline how your endpoints operate and doing so is a realistic objective. The following are four tips to help you in this regard:

• Maximization of security, even in complex operational areas
• Facilitation of a centralized perspective
• Expedient alerts pertaining to security compromise
• Better malware defense (more…)

Trials and loses can bring either the best or the worst in your MSP marketing team. Just like in the film Death Wish, a tragedy befalls the humble Dr. Paul Kersey (Bruce Willis). He loses his wife and finds his daughter in a coma because of a home invasion. This causes him to go on a rampage and take down the criminals who were responsible on his own. He becomes a vigilante who stalks the streets of Chicago and uses his knowledge and abilities as a trauma surgeon to kill offenders. (more…)

Whatever the trade or industry a business belongs to, or whatever the size of its organization, a business needs talented employees who will help accomplish the goals of the company. Your MSP company is no different from any other firm. You also need employees you can count on and who will deliver results. You would want them to have good education, great achievements, the necessary training or the mover and shaker attitude. However, this type of people is hard to come by or they usually do not stay long especially when if it is a small company. And your competitions are clamoring for them to join their organizations.

When you look at your own staff, do you see talent in the crowd? Or do you just see ordinary workers? Most likely, it is a mixture of the two. But, have you ever considered that your ordinary and average employees also have the potential to be great? There are talents in hidden places and heroes do not always look like what we expect them to be. Just like in the first movie of the Star Wars saga, Episode IV- A New Hope, we witnessed how a farm boy (Luke), a princess (Leia), two smugglers (Han and Chewbacca), an astromech (R2-D2) and protocol droid (C-3PO) banded together to thwart the plans of the Galactic Empire. Pretty awesome right? Your MSP company may already have employees with great potentials, but it just takes some nurturing for their talents to develop. Here are ways on to how to do it in your business:

Define roles and goals

You need to have a good system in place. This includes a clear definition of the roles of each employee’s position and an orientation on the corporate vision and goals of your company so that everybody would be on the same page. Explain to them that their performance goals apply to your overall growth strategy and keep track of this with an individual performance evaluation.

Engage

You have to get your employees motivated and inspired to work for the goals of your organization. Have an open-door policy where employees are encouraged to share their opinions, solutions, and ideas to you or your top leaders. Take time to have a one-on-one mentoring session with them and open trainings or avenues for education for them to grow and enhance their skills and abilities. This will help employees find solutions and sharpen their leadership skills.

Challenge them

Give your employees opportunities where they can be challenged to do better and have a wider scope of responsibility. Let them dip a toe in the water by letting them lead a project, campaign or event that is at first on a smaller scale. Then, give them bigger and more important roles as they grow in their confidence.

The Star Wars film redefined what it means to be a hero and showed that everyone has the capability to do great things, even a droid the size of a trash can. It is time to put an end to the corporate mentality of clock-in clock-out to get paid. By nurturing the potential abilities of your team, you will be able to effectively incentivize your employees and utilize their individual strengths to get the most output.

Blue steel! The famous fashion move that brought hit model Derek Zoolander to fame is still in the book of comedy gold. Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson clash in this classic comedy duo, Zoolander. As the two rivals model off for Male Model of the Year what can we learn from this ridiculous movie that can apply to our MSP marketing? (more…)

In managing your MSP business, you may already have committed your fair share of mistakes. You have learned from them and you move on with your business. Oscar Wilde, a famous writer said, “experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.” It is no question that making mistakes is normal and is part of business life. However, they have consequences and a series of blunders could cause the fall of your company. And we do not want that, don’t we?

As much as possible, businesses aim to plan, decide, operate, and execute processes with precision and success. Senator Palpatine, aka Darth Sidious, knew this too well. He carefully and patiently planned his rise to power and cleverly accomplished it under the Jedi Order’s nose. But after he reorganized the Republic into the first Galactic Empire and named himself Emperor, he made some leadership mistakes he did not even know about because of his ideology and arrogance.

Do you want to know what they are?

Mistake 1: Monopolizing power in the organization

Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader were the only key people in their entire Galactic Empire. Palpatine followed the Sith’s philosophy of the Rule of Two where there can only be two Sith Lords at any given time. The master and apprentice controlled the power and had no succession plan. So, when the two were taken out, the whole government fell apart. It is the same with top-heavy companies. They have the tendency to fail once the key people are no longer around. Therefore, it is essential to plan for these situations and train the employees to be ready to assume roles for your MSP business to survive.

Mistake 2: Putting all the eggs in one basket

Palpatine had only one plan – to build the Death Star to exercise control over the galaxy, and that was pretty much it. He had no alternative plan and when the Death Star was destroyed, he just built another one which was of course also destroyed by the Rebel Alliance. This gives businesses the message to never concentrate all efforts and resources in one area as one could lose everything.

Mistake 3: Giving no chance of growth for employees

The culture in Palpatine’s empire was merely motivated by fear and there was no opportunity for the employees to have a voice in the organization. The workers were treated as dispensable objects. When you have the same atmosphere in your IT business, then employees to tend to have low morale and there would be high employee turnover.

Mistake 4: Ignoring previous mistakes

The biggest mistake is failing to learn from your previous mistakes. The emperor did not truly learn after the devastation of the first Death Star and just made another one. In a business, leaders must be humble enough to admit their mistakes and most of all to learn from them. Make an analysis of what went wrong and try different approaches and perspective so that you can carry out a better plan.

Mistake 5: Having limited to no advisers

The emperor had only Darth Vader to discuss his plans with and had no other Sith Lords to ask advice from. This made his plans vulnerable to mistakes as they were only seen from their perspectives. It is critical to have plenty of good advisers whether in taking over the galaxy or in managing a business. Advisers help in giving you wisdom through their experience or expertise and they can share a different viewpoint or mindset that could help make better decisions.

You do not need to commit mistakes first just, so you can learn from them. It is better for your MSP business to learn from other people and in this case, from Darth Sidious himself. You need to lead and manage your company with humility in order to create an environment where team members feel safe in contributing ideas, grow, and are motivated. Without humility, you will not learn from your mistakes or from others. It is time to give up ideologies that do not work and embrace a learner’s mindset.