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I was thrilled when I read this announcement from the MSPAlliance. Read it here.

Why is this such good news?

I’ve been working with our insurance agent for some time now. He’s a good guy and a very capable insurance broker, but he doesn’t understand the details of our business at all. The term “Managed Service Provider” means nothing to him.

Often times the role that we play for clients involves assuming a great deal of responsibility. Combine that with the fact that most of our customers don’t understand much about technology, and you have potentially volatile situations when something goes wrong.

Getting access to an insurance program that is specifically meant to suit the needs and alleviate the risks of the MSP could potentially be a big win for our industry.

Good work Charles Weaver - thanks for looking out for us!

MRC

Charles Weaver at the MSP Alliance had an interesting post on his site today.  He discusses the importance of the industry using common language to describe who we are and what we do.  This is easy to dismiss as “no big deal”, but please read on.

Despite the success we’ve had at Everon, I would love for it to be 20x its size already!  I’ve put a good amount of time and energy into thinking about how to speed up the growth velocity of our efforts, and I look for any competitive edge I can.

One of the most valuable experiences I’ve had was speaking the Graham Weston, the Executive Chairman of Rackspace.  I ran into him at a conference (see my post regarding this meeting at my personal blog here) and he was nice enough to sit with me for an hour to answer my question; “Why were you able to experience explosive growth when nobody in our industry has been able to?”

For those that don’t know, Rackspace is in the managed hosting business, and they have rocketed to somewhere in the neighborhood of $200m in annual sales.  Very impressive.

So what was his answer?  He says that the single most important factor going against us is:

That our industry doesn’t have a common language for what we do that the general public knows and understands.

Are you surpised by that response?  I sure was!  But it makes total sense. 

Ask yourself, how many people are out searching Google for ‘web hosting” right this minute?  A gazillion!

Now ask, how many people are out searching for “Managed IT Services”, or “MSPs in my city”, or anything similar?  The answer is, not many!  I know, because I’ve spent a good amount of time trying to capture that traffic.  It isn’t huge.  They are more likey to search for words like “IT services“, but that is pretty broad and untargeted.

This makes it much harder for the industry in general to mass market our services, which stifles growth.  It’s the number one problem in our industry, and it’s the reason that Dell getting into our space is a blessing in disguise!  They will spread the word in a way none of us can afford to do.  Now all we have to do is out-perform them!

So pay attention to Charles Weaver - he’s a smart guy!

MRC