Grow Your MSP 10x Faster With Co-managed IT

Show Notes

Hello and welcome to a very special edition of the podcast. For the first time ever, we’re doing a complete deep dive into one of the biggest growth opportunities available to your MSP right now… co-managed IT.

Welcome to Episode 339 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge.

Grow Your MSP 10x Faster With Co-managed IT

Before I get into it, I want to tell you something about how we prepared for this episode, because I think that’s going to matter. So some background… we’re launching a new co-managed IT marketing membership, and I’ll tell you more about that at the end of the podcast, although if you do want to sneak peek, it’s on my website right now at mspmarketingedge.com/membership.

Anyway, to help us get this right from day one, over the last six months, my team and I have done hundreds and hundreds of hours of research into this topic. We’ve interviewed IT directors, real ones who actually buy co-managed IT, so people who sit in the role that your MSP will be trying to reach if you did this. And we’ve also interviewed MSPs who already have co-managed clients and are winning more of them. And all of that work has helped us to build a new membership. And of course, it’s also got into this podcast episode.

So what you’re going to hear or see today isn’t just my opinion about marketing to IT directors, it’s grounded in what they actually told us. In their own words about how they think, what they fear and what they want, and crucially, how they make buying decisions. In fact, throughout this episode, I’m going to play you some clips from one of those research conversations. It was an interview I did with an IT director who was very open with us, and I’m operating here on the principle that it’s better to seek forgiveness than it is to ask permission so he doesn’t know I’m playing these clips. Let’s keep this a secret, shall we?

To protect his privacy, his voice has been filtered, and I’m going to call him Dave. Obviously, that’s not his real name, but these are his real words, completely unscripted. And remember, the call that I did with him was a research call six months ago. It wasn’t an interview. I’ve picked Dave for this because he really gave us insight into the emotions that an IT director goes through when they think about partnering with an MSP. And I think when you hear him speak, it’s going to change how you think about this massive opportunity.

So, four things we’re going to cover today. First of all, what co-managed IT actually is, and just as importantly, what it isn’t. Number two, who makes the buying decision. Number three, why businesses choose co-managed. Number four, how you need to position and market yourself differently if you want to win this kind of work. Let’s go.

What co-managed IT is and what it isn’t

The single biggest mistake that MSPs make when they try to enter the co-managed market is assuming that it’s just a variation of what they already do. They take the same messaging that they use for business owners and bolt the words co-managed onto the front. And then they wonder why the conversation dies. Well, it dies because the buyer is completely different and a different buyer needs completely different language.

In traditional B2B sales, you’re usually talking to a business owner or a senior manager who doesn’t live inside technology every day like you do. They don’t really want to understand it. They don’t want to talk about governance, architecture, service tiers, all of that stuff. What they want is relief. They just want someone to take all of the technology away from them. And that’s why phrases like, “We handle everything” or “Leave your IT to us”, they work so well in B2B marketing because you’re selling peace of mind to someone who just wants the problem to disappear.

But here’s the thing, an IT director doesn’t want the problem to disappear. The problem is their job, their professional identity, their credibility, their authority, their reputation inside the business they work for. And all of it is tied up to how well the technology environment runs. So if you walk into that conversation sounding like you’re about to take control, then of course the conversation’s going to stop immediately because that IT director hears a threat from you and not an offer from you.

The right way to define co-managed IT is this… you’re not replacing internal IT, you’re strengthening it.

The internal IT team keeps strategic ownership, they still set the direction, define the standards, and own the relationship with the leadership team. But your MSP provides clearly defined operational capacity and specialist expertise within agreed boundaries.

That framing changes everything because now you’re not a threat, you’re a resource. And let’s hear this directly from IT director, Dave, because he described the pressure that creates the need for reinforcement better than I ever could.

The reality is you’ve never got enough resource to do everything. And obviously the smaller the business, the more likely that’s the case. So I think they will always want the resource and the support. It’s just getting a foot in the door and proving trustworthy and proving that you can wear their hat, as it were.

Wear their hat – I love that phrase because that’s exactly what co-managed requires of your MSP. Not to impose your way of doing things, but to understand their world deeply enough that you can operate inside it on their terms. Now, let me give you a few real world pictures of when co-managed makes sense, because it’s not just about headcount.

Think about a manufacturing company with 250 staff and a two-person IT team. The team is capable and respected internally, but the business has grown. Multiple sites, increasing security requirements, and a constant flow of operational tickets. And every quarter, there’s a list of strategic projects that the IT director wants to complete, but operational noise consumes most of the team’s time. So those projects keep slipping. Nothing’s broken, but the structure’s under a lot of pressure. And that’s a co-managed conversation.

Or think about a business where one senior engineer holds most of the institutional knowledge about the infrastructure because he built it, he understands it, but if he leaves or if he gets sick or is just unavailable during an incident, then the organisation is exposed. That’s also a co-managed conversation. Again, not because anything’s gone wrong, but because the risk of something going wrong is too high. You’re not fixing failure, you’re strengthening something that already works.

Who makes the buying decisions?

Now this is where it gets really interesting and also where a lot of MSPs get caught out. Because unlike a standard B2B sale where you’re largely dealing with one decision maker, co-managed deals usually involved two distinct groups with very different priorities. The first group is the IT directors themselves, and they understand the operational case better than anyone. They know the team is stretched and they know the risks of that. They also know what a co-managed partner could give to them.

But here’s the part that many MSP owners underestimate. They also carry the greatest personal exposure in this decision. If the partnership works well, it reflects really positively on them. It looks like strategic thinking, it looks like leadership. But if it creates friction or disruption or confusion, that also reflects on them, in a way that a business owner just doesn’t experience.

You and me, we take risks as business owners all the time, right? If a decision costs us some money, that hurts, but it’s our money. There’s no risk to our reputation amongst our team. There’s just risk to a bit of money and a bit of time. But IT director’s decisions are judged by people above them. By their executives, their peers, sometimes even a board. So when they consider bringing in an MSP, they’re not just evaluating your capability, they’re evaluating their own exposure. They’re asking themselves a quiet, private question in their heart. “How will this decision make me look?”

I asked IT director Dave about this, about how he’d feel if the MSP he was working with was positioned strategically to the board, and his answer was very revealing.

With that kind of thing, it might be better to position it as… the name that jumps out in terms of what it is, is “virtual IT director”, but as you say, that’s potentially a threat. So probably you want to sell it as “virtual IT leadership”, something like that so that it’s not threatening and it’s there to support you and to give you another set of eyes.

Did you hear what he just said? You have to make it not threatening. And this is why you have to be very careful with your marketing and the specific words that you use during marketing and sales meetings to not sound like you’re trying to replace the IT director or the internal IT team. You’re there to offer reinforcement. It’s the same service, you’re doing the same things but psychologically it’s positioned completely differently. That’s the kind of precision that you require when you’re marketing co-managed IT.

So that’s IT directors. The second group involved in the buying decision is the executive leadership. So maybe the CEO, the CFO or the board. And these people aren’t evaluating you technically in any way. They’re evaluating structural stability. “Does this reduce risk? Does it make the business more resilient? Is it more sustainable than hiring extra IT people internally?” And here’s the thing, any change to IT structure carries perceived danger at board level.

Even if their current model is way overstretched, it’s familiar. And introducing an external partner like you can feel like adding complexity and risk, unless you frame it very carefully. And one really important thing that our research revealed is that bigger businesses run on budget cycles. There are times that they can make buying decisions and there are times that they cannot make buying decisions. Now, this is something I genuinely hadn’t thought about before because as a business owner, I make buying decisions based on cash in the bank. Do you do the same or do you have a budget? Well, listen to this. And just for some context, I recorded this with IT director Dave at the back end of last year.

This all works in budget cycles. Our budget year is July to June. We had our first budget meetings in February. I’ve just put in dates for February for next year and we’ll agree CapEx and OpEx spend through that process between February and April for that July to June. So we kind of have the big wrestling matches at that point, and then broadly speaking that’s it.

That kind of knowledge is gold dust if you’re doing co-managed IT sales, because you could have the most perfectly positioned conversation in the world with an IT director in August, but if nothing can happen till February, that’s nothing to do with you, you can’t change that, it’s all to do with them and the business and the budgetary cadence that they operate within.

Understanding budget cycles means you can plan your outreach to land at exactly the right moment. And if you get into the budget conversation early enough, you can get locked in before the decision’s even formally made.

Why businesses choose co-managed IT

Let’s talk about the signals that tell you a business is ready for this conversation because the decision to bring in co-managed support rarely starts with someone saying, “We need help”, it starts with pressure. Pressure that’s been building slowly, that’s become so normal the IT director has almost stopped noticing it.

The first signal is sustained capacity pressure. So projects constantly slipping, security initiatives planned but never implemented, and strategic improvements repeatedly delayed. When an IT director tells you they’re coping, listen very carefully, because coping is not thriving. Coping means the structure is running right at the edge.

I’m full. Everyone on my team is full, IT is full. So everyone will have challenges and the smaller the business, you don’t know what you don’t know. That’s a big thing.

You don’t know what you don’t know. That’s such an important phrase, because a lot of IT directors in smaller businesses are stretched so thin they don’t have the bandwidth to even identify the gaps. They’re just too busy filling them, which means your MSP has an opportunity to be this set of eyes that sees the problems that they can’t see themselves.

The second signal is security overwhelm, and this one is bigger than ever right now. Internal teams are expected to manage infrastructure, support users, maintain uptime, and simultaneously keep pace with an expanding and genuinely terrifying threat landscape. That dual pressure creates silent strain. And IT director Dave was very clear about what keeps him up at night.

Without a doubt it’s the fact that, certainly in our business, there’s more and more operational tech. IT has always been centre of companies, but now it’s right there stopping the work in some cases from happening. So these systems going down and what we refer to as a catastrophic event, which is the big ransomware type attack, that is absolutely horrifying.

Horrifying… that’s the word he just used. And I want you to sit with that for a second because that’s the emotional state of the person that you’re trying to reach here. Not mildly concerned, not keeping an eye on it… horrified at what could happen if the worst occurs. Unlike the normal business owners that we try to sell to who don’t understand how horrendous a ransomware attack can be, these are IT people. They know. It’s like when a doctor gets ill, they know exactly what it means and what the consequences are, whereas normal patients just don’t.

Here’s something else Dave said that really struck me about when cyber attacks tend to happen. And the first thing he’s going to mention is a supermarket chain here in the UK. And when he talks about bank holiday, that’s a term we use here in the UK for a public holiday when the whole country gets a day off.

If we take the Co-op attack in the summer, 5pm on a Friday that started. Bank holiday, Friday… that’s when someone’s going to go because you’ve usually got less staff, more skeleton staff going into a weekend… less eyes. And if it wasn’t being watched overnight, you’re probably too late.

Friday afternoon, a holiday weekend, that’s when they come. You know that already, of course. And you know the answer to this is having a SOC and 24/7 monitoring. I guess these are all things that you can buy in and you can supply to the internal IT team that you’re supporting. That’s the kind of thinking that they’ve got. Although selling co-managed IT to them is not about talking about services and capabilities, not really until you get down to the nitty gritty of contract details anyway. It’s about knowing what you can do to help them sleep better every single day, and that’s really important.

The third signal is what I’d call knowledge concentration. When too much institutional knowledge sits with one or two key individuals. In that situation, the business becomes fragile, and that’s not a competence problem, is it? It’s a resilience problem.

And then the fourth signal is reactive dominance, where most of the team’s time is spent firefighting rather than planning. When that happens, governance weakens, documentation gets outdated, strategic thinking evaporates. And none of that means the team is failing. It just means the model is overstretched.

How to position and market your MSP to win co-managed IT contracts

Let me start this final section with four mistakes that MSPs commonly make when they try to enter this market, because avoiding these is as important as anything else. Mistake number one is using the wrong language… taking B2B messaging and putting it in front of IT directors. Now we’ve covered this, it signals takeover and resistance, so your message must be one of relief, not resistance.

Mistake two is leading with tools. Listing your monitoring platforms or explaining your security stack or which PSA you use. An IT director doesn’t need to be impressed by your tools, they know what tools exist. What they want to see is how you structure the relationship, the discussion of which tools do you use will come down the line.

Mistake number three is positioning yourself as technically superior to the internal IT team because that immediately creates tension. You’re not there to be smarter, you’re there to be more structured and there is a big difference.

And then mistake number four, talking prices too early. Co-managed pricing depends entirely on how responsibilities are defined. Until you’ve had that conversation, any number you put on the table is meaningless and possibly even damaging. Lead with structure, not costs.

Which brings us to the positioning and marketing that you should be doing. And this is where it all comes together. And actually the shift is quite simple once you understand it. In B2B marketing, as we’ve mentioned already, you sell relief. In co-managed marketing, you sell reinforcement. So every piece of language needs to reflect that. Instead of “We manage everything.”, you say, “We operate within clearly defined boundaries.” Instead of, “We take responsibility.”, you say, “Responsibilities are documented so accountability stays clear.” Instead of “We become your IT department.”, you say, “We reinforce your existing structure.” The service underneath might barely change, but the framing changes everything.

And there’s one more thing that our research revealed about reaching IT directors that I think is worth sharing with you honestly, because it’s humbling.

At some point, and I don’t know the answer to this, but how do you even get to talk to them, as in talk to an IT director? Because in my experience we’re flooded. I have a desk phone number but it’s just got a voicemail on it that says if you’re a supplier doing a cold call, I don’t return any calls, don’t leave a message. And I get maybe five emails from different suppliers every day.

Five cold emails a day, a voicemail that tells suppliers not to bother. I mean, that’s the person you’re trying to reach. And IT director Dave answered his own question immediately after saying that.

It’s about being in the right place at the right time or dangling the carrot enough to be memorable enough for when that moment happens.

In the right place at the right time, memorable enough for when that moment happens. That’s it. That’s the whole game. You can’t force an IT director to need you, but you can make sure that when the moment arrives, when the team is stretched, when the security risk feels real, and when the budget conversation is approaching, you’re already the name in their head.

The MSP who keeps showing up with relevant, useful, thoughtful content, who understands their world, who doesn’t sound like every other MSP out there. That’s how you win these co-managed IT deals. Not by cold calling your way in, but by being so present, so relevant and so clearly structured that when the IT director is finally ready, you feel like the obvious choice.

I have a three-step lead generation system, which I’ve talked about extensively in this podcast. We use it for all of our B2B marketing. It’s build audiences, grow relationships and convert relationships. And during our research phase, we realised that that strategy is also perfect for co-managed IT.

Because you need to build a relationship with IT directors long before you could ever talk to them about partnering with them. By the time they’re ready to discuss a partnership, they’re scared. They’re scared that you’re going to replace them or that you’re going to put their job at risk or their career at risk. And that’s why building that relationship and helping them feel like they know you and they can trust you before they ever talk to you is so important. So the same strategy, the same three steps. But what you do within those three steps is different because you’ve got to adjust the tactics that you use and the messaging and the specific marketing to match to this very different market.

Let’s pull all of this together

So to recap, co-managed IT is not outsourcing its reinforcement. The internal IT team keeps control while your MSP provides capacity and expertise inside agreed boundaries. The buyers are the IT director and the executive leadership, and each group evaluates the decision differently. The IT director is weighing personal exposure as much as operational benefit. The board is weighing structural stability.

Businesses rarely ask directly for reinforcement. The conversation emerges from pressure, capacity strain, security overwhelm, knowledge concentration, and reactive dominance. And the MSP that wins this work is not the one with the best tools or the lowest price. It’s the one that shows up with the right language, at the right time, with the right structure, and makes an IT director feel safe.

Now, if all of this is a priority for you, I can help. So as I mentioned at the start, we spent six months building a brand new membership specifically for winning co-managed clients. It is a version of the B2B membership that we’ve been running for nine years, but we’ve completely rebuilt it for this very different market.

We’ve created a full system, including strategy, tools, and the marketing content that you need, all designed specifically to get you in front of IT directors, speak their language and move them through a buying conversation. And just as with our B2B membership, it’s only available for one MSP per area.

Now, we have been offering this for the last month to our existing B2B members, so we’ve had quite a good presale on this, but if you want to see if your area is still available, just go to mspmarketingedge.com/membership. You don’t have to enter an email address or anything like that. You just put your postal code or your zip code in and it instantly tells you whether or not your area is available. In fact, both for the B2B membership and this brand new co-managed membership.

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Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to a very special edition of the podcast. For the first time ever, we're doing a complete deep dive into one of the biggest growth opportunities available to your MSP right now. Co managed it. And before I get into it, I want to tell you something about how we prepared for this episode, because I think that's going to matter. So some background. We're launching a new co managed IT marketing membership and I'll tell you more about that at the end of the podcast. Although if you do want a sneak peek, it's on my website right now@msp marketingedge.com membership. And if you're watching this on YouTube, you can just scan the QR code that's on screen right now. Anyway, to help us get this right, from day one, over the last six months, my team and I have done hundreds and hundreds of hours of research into this topic. We've interviewed IT directors, real ones who actually buy co managed it, so people who sit in the role that your MSP will be trying to reach if you did this. And we've also interviewed MSPs who already have co managed clients and, and are winning more of them. And all of that work has helped us to build our new membership. And of course, it's also got into this podcast episode. So what you're going to hear or see today isn't just my opinion about marketing to IT directors. It's grounded in what they actually told us in their own words, about how they think, what they fear and what they want, and crucially, how they make buying decisions. In fact, throughout this episode, I'm going to play you some clips from one of those research conversations. It's. It was an interview I did with an IT director who was very open with us. And I'm operating here on the principle that it's better to seek forgiveness than it is to ask permission. So he doesn't know I'm playing these clips. Let's keep this a secret, shall we? To protect his privacy, his voice has been filtered. And I'm going to call him Dave. Obviously that's not his real name, but these are his real words, completely unscripted. And remember, the call that I did with him was a research call six months ago. It wasn't an interview. I've picked Dave for this because he really gave us insight into the emotions that an IT director goes through when they think about partnering with an msp. And I think when you hear him speak, it's going to change how you think about this massive opportunity. So four things we're going to cover today. First of all, what co managed IT actually is and just as importantly, what it isn't. Number two, who makes the buying decision. Number three, why businesses choose co managed and number four, how you need to position and market yourself differently if you want to win this kind of work. Let's go what co managed it is and what it isn't. The single biggest mistake that MSPs make when they try to enter the co managed market is assuming that it's just a variation of what they already do. They take the same messaging that they use for business owners and bolt the words co managed onto the front and and then they wonder why the conversation dies. Well, it dies because the buyer is completely different and a different buyer needs completely different language. In traditional B2B sales, you're usually talking to a business owner or a senior manager who doesn't live inside technology every day like you do. They don't really want to understand it. They don't want to talk about governance, architecture, service tiers, all of that stuff. What they want is relief. They just want someone to take all of the technology away from them. And that's why phrases like we handle everything or leave your IT to us, they work so well in B2B marketing because you're selling peace of mind to someone who just wants the problem to disappear. But here's the thing. An IT director doesn't want the problem to disappear. The problem is their job, their professional identity, their credibility, their authority, their reputation inside the business they work for. And all of it is tied up to how well the technology environment runs. So if you walk into that conversation sounding like you're about to take control, then of course the conversation's going to stop immediately because that IT director hears a threat from you and not an offer from you. The right way to define co managed IT is this. You're not replacing internal it, you're strengthening it. The internal IT team keeps strategic ownership. They still set the direction, define the standards and own the relationship with the leadership team. But your MSP provides clearly defined operational capacity and specialist expertise within agreed boundaries. That framing changes everything because now you're not a threat, you're a resource. And let's hear this directly from IT Director Dave, because he described the pressure that creates the need for reinforcement better than I ever could. [00:04:47] Speaker B: The reality is you've never got enough resource to do everything and obviously the smaller the business, the more likely that's the case. So I think they will always want the resource and the support. It's just getting A foot in the door and proving trustworthy and proving that you can wear their hat, as it were. [00:05:12] Speaker A: Wear their hat. I love that phrase. Because that's exactly what co managed requires of your msp. Not to impose your way of doing things, but to understand their world deeply enough that you can operate inside it on their terms. Now let me give you a few real world pictures of when co managed makes sense. Because it's not just about headcount. Think about a manufacturing company with 250 staff and a two person IT team. The team is capable and respected internally, but the business has grown. Multiple sites, increasing security requirements and a constant flow of operational tickets. And every quarter there's a list of strategic projects that the IT director wants to complete. But operational noise consumes most of the team's time. So those projects keep slipping. Nothing's broken, but the structure's under a lot of pressure. And that's a co managed conversation. Or think about a business where one senior engineer holds most of the institutional knowledge about the infrastructure. Because he built it, he understands it. But if he leaves or if he gets sick or is just unavailable during an incident, then the organization is exposed. That's also a co managed conversation. Again, not because anything's gone wrong, but because the risk of something going wrong is too high. You're not fixing failure, you're strengthening something that already works. Who makes the buying decision? Now this is where it gets really, really interesting and also where a lot of MSPs get caught out. Because unlike a standard B2B sale where you're largely dealing with one decision maker, co managed deals usually involved two distinct groups with very different priorities. The first group is the IT directors themselves and they understand the operational case better than anyone. They know the team is stretched and they know the risks of that. They also know what a co managed partner could give to them. But here's the part that many MSP owners underestimate. They also carry the greatest personal exposure in this decision. Because if the partnership works well, it reflects really positively on them. It looks like strategic thinking, it looks like leadership. But if it creates friction or disruption or confusion, that also reflects on them and in a way that a business owner just doesn't experience. Because you and me, we take risks as business owners all the time, right? If a decision costs us some money, lost money, yeah, that hurts. Of course it hurts for a bit. But it's our money, right? There's no risk to our reputation amongst our team. There's just risk to a bit of money and a bit of Time an IT director's decisions are judged by people above them, by their executives, their peers, sometimes even a board. So when they consider bringing in an msp, they're not just evaluating your capability, they're evaluating their own exposure. They're asking themselves a quiet, private question in their heart, how will this decision make me look? I asked IT Director Dave about this, about how he'd feel if the MSP he was working with was positioned strategically to the board. And his answer was very revealing. [00:08:15] Speaker B: With that kind of thing, it might be better to position IT as some. The name that jumps off the thing in terms of what IT is is virtual IT Director. But as you say, that's potentially a threat. So probably you want to sell that as mental or virtual IT leadership, something like that, so that it's not threatening and it's there to support you and to give you another set of eyes. [00:08:47] Speaker A: Did you hear what he just said? You have to make it not threatening. And this is why you have to be very careful with your marketing and the specific words that you use during marketing and sales meetings to not sound like you're trying to replace the IT director or the internal IT team. You're there to offer reinforcement. It's the same service, you're doing the same things, but psychologically it's positioned completely differently. And that's the kind of precision that you require when you're marketing. Co managed it. So that's IT directors. The second group involved in the buying decision is the executive leadership. So maybe the CEO, the, the CFO or the board. And these people aren't evaluating you technically in any way. They're evaluating structural stability. Does this reduce risk? Does it make the business more resilient? Is it more sustainable than hiring extra IT people internally? And here's the thing. Any change to IT structure carries perceived danger at board level, even if their current model is way overstretched. It's familiar. And introducing an external partner like you can feel like adding complexity and risk unless you frame it very carefully. And one really important thing that our research revealed is that bigger businesses run on budget cycles. There are times that they can make buying decisions and there are times that they cannot make buying decisions. Now this is something I genuinely hadn't thought about before, because as a business owner, I make buying decisions based on cash in the bank. Do you do the same or do you have a budget? Well, listen to this. And just for some context, I recorded this with IT Director Dave at the back end of last year. [00:10:26] Speaker B: This all works in budget cycles. Our budget year is July to June. We had our first budget meetings in February. I've just put in dates for February for next year and we'll agree capex and OPEX spend through that process between February and April for that July to June. So we kind of had the big wrestling matches at that point and then broadly speaking, that's it. [00:10:54] Speaker A: That kind of knowledge is gold dust if you're doing co managed IT sales. Because you could have the most perfectly positioned conversation in the world with an IT director in August. But if nothing can happen till February, well, that's nothing to do with you. You can't change that. It's all to do with them and the business and the budgetary cadence that they operate within. Understanding budget cycles means you can plan your outreach to land at exactly the right moment. And if you get into the budget conversation early enough, you can get locked in before the decision's even formally made. Why businesses choose CO managed IT so let's talk about the signals that tell you a business is ready for this conversation. Because the decision to bring in co managed support rarely starts with someone saying, hmm, we need help. It starts with pressure. Pressure that's been building slowly, that's become so normal the IT director has almost stopped noticing it. The first signal is sustained capacity pressure. So projects constantly slipping, security initiatives planned but never implemented, and strategic improvements repeatedly delayed. When an IT director tells you they're coping, listen very carefully because coping is not thriving. Coping means the structure is running right at the edge. [00:12:13] Speaker B: I'm full. Everyone in my team, full. IT is full. So everyone will have challenges. And the smaller the business. You don't know what you don't know. Yeah, that's a big thing. [00:12:26] Speaker A: You don't know what you don't know. That's such an important phrase because a lot of IT directors in smaller businesses are stretched so thin they don't have the bandwidth to even identify the gaps. They're just too busy filling them. Which means your MSP has an opportunity to be this set of eyes that sees the problems that they can't see themselves. The second signal is security overwhelm and this one is bigger than ever. Right now, internal teams are expected to manage infrastructure support users, maintain uptime and simultaneously keep pace with an expanding and genuinely terrifying threat landscape. That dual pressure creates silent strain. And IT director Dave was very clear about what keeps him up at night. [00:13:09] Speaker B: Without a doubt, it's the fact that certainly in our business there's more and more operational tech. It's always been centerish of companies, but now it's right there, stopping the work, in some cases happening. So these systems going down and what we refer to as our catastrophic event, which is the biggest ransomware type attack, that is absolutely horrifying. [00:13:40] Speaker A: Horrifying. That's the word he just used. And I want you to sit with that for a second because that's the emotional state of the person that you're trying to reach here. Not mildly concerned, not keeping an eye on it, horrified at what could happen if the worst occurs. Unlike the normal business owners that we try to sell to, who don't understand how horrendous a ransomware attack can be, these are IT people. They know. It's like when a doctor gets ill, they know exactly what it means and what the consequences are, whereas normal patients just don't. Here's something else Dave said that really struck me about when cyber attacks tend to happen. And the first thing he's going to mention is a supermarket chain here in the uk. And when he talks about bank holiday, that's a term we use here in the UK for a public holiday, when the whole country gets a day off. [00:14:27] Speaker B: If we take the co op attack in the summer, 5pm on a Friday that started bank holiday Friday, we all ourselves, that's when someone's going to go. Because you've usually got less staff, more skeleton staff going into a weekend, less eyes. And if it wasn't being watched overnight, you're probably too late. [00:14:50] Speaker A: Friday afternoon, a holiday weekend, that's when they come. And you know that already, of course. And you know the answer to this is having a sock and 247 monitoring. I mean, I guess these are all things that you can buy in and you can supply to the internal IT team that you're supporting. That's the kind of thinking that they've got. Although selling co managed it to them is not about talking about services and capabilities, not really, until you get down to the nitty gritty of contract details anyway. It's about knowing what you can do to help them sleep better every single day. And that's really important. The third signal is what I'd call knowledge concentration. When too much institutional knowledge sits with one or two key individuals in that situation, the business becomes fragile. And that's not a competence problem, is it? It's a resilience problem. And then the fourth signal is reactive dominance, where most of the team's time is spent firefighting rather than planning. When that happens, governance weakens, documentation gets outdated, strategic thinking evaporates, and none of that means the team is failing. It just Means the model is overstretched. How to position and market your MSP to win Co managed IT contracts. So let me start this final section with four mistakes that MSPs commonly make when they try to enter this market, because avoiding these is as important as anything else. Mistake number one is using the wrong language, taking B2B messaging and putting it in front of it directors. Now we've covered this, it signals takeover and resistance. So your message must be one of relief, not resistance. Mistake two is leading with tools listing your monitoring platforms or explaining your security stack or which PSA you use. An IT director doesn't need to be impressed by your tools. They know what tools exist. What they want to see is how you structure the relationship. The discussion of so which tools do you use that will come down the line? Mistake number three is positioning yourself as technically superior to the internal IT team because that immediately creates tension. You're not there to be smarter, you're there to be more structured. And there is a big difference. And then mistake number four, talking prices too early. Co managed pricing depends entirely on how responsibilities are defined. Until you've had that conversation, any number you put on the table is meaningless and possibly even damaging. Lead with structure, not costs. Which brings us to the positioning and marketing that you should be doing. And this is where it all comes together. And actually the shift is quite simple once you understand it. In B2B marketing, as we've mentioned already, you sell relief. In co managed marketing you sell reinforcement. So every piece of language needs to reflect that. Instead of we manage everything, you say we operate within clearly defined boundaries. Instead of we take responsibility, you say responsibilities are documented so accountability stays clear. Instead of we become your IT department, you say we reinforce your existing structure. The service underneath might barely change, but the framing changes everything. And there's one more thing that our research revealed about reaching IT directors that I think is worth sharing with you. Honestly, because it's humbling at some point [00:18:06] Speaker B: and I don't know the answer to this, but how do you even get to talk to them? As in talk to an IT director? Because in my experience with Flooded, I have a desk phone number. I don't even have a desk phone, but it's just got a voicemail on it that says if you doing a cold call, I don't return any calls, don't leave a message. And I get maybe five emails from different suppliers every day. [00:18:36] Speaker A: Five cold emails a day, A voicemail that tells suppliers not to bother. I mean that's the person you're trying to reach. And IT director Dave answered his own question immediately after saying that it's about [00:18:48] Speaker B: being in the right place at the right time, or dangling the carrot enough to be of memorable enough for when that moment happens, in the right place [00:19:00] Speaker A: at the right time, memorable enough for when that moment happens. That's it. That's the whole game. You can't force an IT director to need you, but you can make sure that when the moment arrives, when the team is stretched, when the security risk feels real, and when the budget conversation is approaching, you're already the name in their head. The MSP who keeps showing up with relevant, useful, thoughtful content, who understands their world, who doesn't sound like every other MSP out there. That's how you win these co managed IT deals. Not by cold calling your way in, but by being so present, so relevant and so clearly structured that when the IT director is finally ready, you feel like the obvious choice. I have a three step lead generation system which I've talked about extensively in this podcast. We use it for all of our B2B marketing. It's build audiences, grow relationships and convert relationships. And during our research phase we realized that that strategy is also perfect for co managed it because you need to build a relationship with IT directors long before you could ever talk to them about partnering with them. By the time they're ready to discuss a partnership, they're scared. They're scared that you're going to replace them or that you're going to put their job at risk or their career at risk. And that's where building that relationship and helping them feel like they know you and they can trust you before they ever talk to you is so important. So the same strategy, the same three steps, but what you do within those three steps is different because you've got to adjust the tactics that you use and the messaging and the specific marketing to match to this very different market. Let's pull all of this together. So to recap, co managed IT is not outsourcing, it's reinforcement. The internal IT team keeps control while your MSP provides capacity and expertise inside agreed boundaries. The buyers are the IT director and the executive leadership, and each group evaluates the decision differently. The IT director is weighing personal exposure as much as operational benefit. The board is weighing structural stability, and businesses rarely ask directly for reinforcement. The conversation emerges from pressure, capacity, strain, security, overwhelm, knowledge, concentration and reactive dominance. And the MSP that wins this work is not the one with the best tools or the lowest price. It's the one that shows up with the right language at the right time, with the right structure and makes an IT director feel safe. Now if all of this is a priority for you, I can help. So as I mentioned at the start, we spent six months building a brand new membership specifically for winning co managed clients. It is a version of the B2B membership that we've been running for nine years, but we've completely rebuilt it for this very different market. We've created a full system including strategy tools and the marketing content that you need, all designed specifically to get you in front of IT directors, speak their language and move them through a buying conversation. And just as with our B2B membership, it's only available for one MSP per area. Now we have been offering this for the last month to our existing B2B members, so we've had quite a good pre sale on this. But if you want to see if your area is still available, just go to MSP marketingedge.com membership if you're watching on YouTube just scan the QR code on screen right now. You don't have to enter an email address or anything like that. You just put your postal code or your zip code in and it instantly tells you whether or not your area is available. In fact, both for the B2B membership and this brand new co managed membership. Thanks so much for listening or watching this special episode next week. Thanks for watching. We're back to normal. We'll be talking about how to turn boring compliance updates into lead gen on LinkedIn. See you then for MSPs around the world around the world the MSP Marketing Podcast with Paul Green.