Welcome to Episode 270 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week…
Your MSP’s bank balance might look great and you might be impressed with your other KPIs. But there’s a hidden one that I bet you $5 you never look at. Yet it could flip things completely. Most MSPs have never heard of this key performance indicator, and yet it’s the ultimate quality check for any recurring revenue business.
In just a few minutes, you’ll find out what this secret KPI is, how to calculate it in under 10 minutes and exactly what score proves that you are running a truly outstanding MSP.
One of the things I love about working in the channel is that every day is a school day and you never ever feel like you have finally learned everything. This, in 2025, is my ninth year working with MSPs and honestly, I feel like I learn so much every single day. And as someone who has a passion, and a need in fact, for constant learning, I do find this exciting and not at all tiring.
In fact, just a few months back I was chatting to an MSP and we were talking about how much progress their business has made over the last couple of years. It’s been actually astonishing. And then he said to me how delighted he was with the performance of his NRR, and that’s N, as in N for November, not MRR, which is M for mother. And of course we know what MRR is. It’s monthly recurring revenue.
What is NRR? It stands for Net Revenue Retention – essentially, which clients that we had last year are still here this year.
It’s a quality score. It’s something that is used a lot by SaaS businesses (subscription as a service businesses) and all subscription businesses typically use it, just not normally MSPs.
But if you are looking for more ways to measure how good a job you’re doing, this could be it. So let me tell you how you’d measure this and what good performance looks like. This will be a great time of year to measure it because you could kind of look back to the end of 2023 or the beginning of 2024 and look at the clients you had then and ask how many of those clients do we still have today? What was the value of their monthly recurring revenue a year ago? And has that grown today? That MSP that I was speaking to has an NRRR of 105%, which means that he’s kept all of his clients over the year, which is not unusual for an MSP, but it’s still nice to measure and know for a fact, and it means that he’s also grown their monthly recurring revenue – got the same clients, they’re spending more.
And I would say for an MSP that anything under a score of a hundred percent needs some investigating because you do expect to hang on to all of your clients year to year, don’t you? And you should definitely be growing their MRR and you can do this by increasing prices or selling them extra services. If you do lose a client during the year, it should only really be for natural reasons such as they’ve gone out of business or better still they’ve been acquired. And you may have the odd year where you lose a client for bad reasons. Maybe they’ve fallen out with you or they’ve moved over to another MSP, but those should be exceptions rather than the norm. And the net recurring revenue retention score allows you to measure that. And hey, if you do measure this for your business, will you let me know what score you get because I’d like to kind of figure that out across a whole number of different MSPs. My email address is [email protected].
Stop digging down the back of the couch for spare change to fund your MSP’s growth. January might mean tightening your belt a bit, but that doesn’t have to stop you from finding new clients and driving revenue.
Let me tell you about three clever no cost marketing ideas that any MSP can use to generate leads and unlock hidden opportunities, all without spending a penny.
You’ve heard of bootstrapping a business, right? It’s when a new venture is built up using limited funds and a lot of goodwill, and you hear stories of founders sleeping in their office so they don’t have to waste money renting an apartment. Now, your business is more liquid than that, but there’s still a place for bootstrapping when it comes to marketing.
Marketing doesn’t have to just cost cash. You can invest a different resource into it instead… TIME.
And this doesn’t have to be your personal time. If your staff have a few hours spare every week, you can always invest their time into the business. Everyone benefits when that happens. So here are three low cost or no cost marketing ideas for MSPs…
The first is to do 15 minutes every weekday on LinkedIn. The most robust way to market in 2024 is to build an audience, then grow a relationship with that audience. And at the point they’re ready to switch from one MSP to another, they are dramatically more likely to switch to the MSP that they know. And one way to build this audience is simply to grow your LinkedIn network. For 15 minutes every day, make connection requests to business owners and managers in your town or your vertical (niche). Make 10 connection requests every day and one or two of them will accept. Now, that doesn’t sound a lot until you compound it. Let’s say two connections, times five days a week, times 50 weeks a year, that adds up into 500 new connections every year. How cool is that?
Number two, ask every user this one simple feedback question. The most robust way to grow net profits is to get your existing clients to buy more from you. New clients are nice, yeah, but they’re very expensive. Whereas someone who is already paying you every month contributes a lot more to the bottom line if they go on to buy something else. And this is why businesses like McDonald’s have fully systemised the upsell – Would you like to go large? or Would you like to add fries to that? Of course, we all know how difficult it can be to get technicians to upsell. Even people who are passionate about talking about extra services will sometimes fall back into their comfort zone, which is to go for the easy fix and not mention X, Y, Z new service. So how about you get your team into the habit of asking this one simple question of every person, every user that they speak to. What else could we have done for you today?
Now, most clients will say, oh, nothing thanks because they’re in a hurry to put the phone down and this probably means that you’ve checked that they are happy. All is good. Some will use it as an opportunity to talk about something that they’d meant to bring up, but perhaps they hadn’t felt that they’d had chance to. And this means that you’ve uncovered some money on the table, profit that you would otherwise have lost. And a handful will tell you about a service or a product that they’d like to buy from you, if only you sold it. And this is invaluable market research. With this one, look out for the trends. What are several people asking for? Because if you don’t give it to them, they are just going to go elsewhere to get it.
And then the third and the final one is to run a free to enter prize draw. People love competitions. Yes, even business owners and managers, they never expect to win, but just the act of entering brightens their day for a second. I used to be a radio presenter a very long time ago, and it was weird how many people would phone up just to win like a Backstreet Boys CD, because this was back in the 1990s. And there are two types of prize draw that you can do. Either offer up any old prize that you can find just for the sake of running a competition, and make sure the prize is really attractive. It can be as simple as a laptop that you acquired for a client that they didn’t actually buy for whatever reason, and it’s just sat on a shelf gathering dust. The other way to do it is to give away a sample of something specific that you are promoting. For example, if you are launching a new monthly recurring revenue service to existing clients, then you’d give away a year’s free membership.
If none of those three grabbed your attention, don’t worry. In next week’s podcast, I’ve got another three bootstrap, low cost/no cost marketing ideas for your MSP.
Featured guest: Ori Elraviv is a multicultural turnaround executive with a passion for driving sustainable growth in small to medium-sized businesses.
Ori spent the majority of his career in leadership positions in a variety of digital media ventures, managing teams and growing businesses in a diverse set of countries and cultures.
Having relocated multiple times over the past 20 years, Ori is now settled in New Jersey with his wife and 3 children, enjoying some stability in an increasingly chaotic world.
Is your MSP’s story ready for a plot twist? 2025 could be the start of your most exciting chapter yet. Whatever challenges have filled your journey so far, now’s the time to rewrite the narrative and set up your business for real growth. In today’s interview, our special guest, a turnaround expert, will show you how to open the next chapter with clarity, focus, and fresh momentum.
Coming up, you’ll discover how to organise your priorities, craft a winning growth strategy, and create a story for 2025 that’s really worth celebrating.
Hi, I’m Ori Elraviv. I am a business turnaround specialist. Really, I’m helping companies and business owners solve problems with revenue, profit, and product.
I think those are the core problems in any business, aren’t they? We haven’t got enough revenue, what do we say, revenue, profit and products. We haven’t got enough revenue. We definitely don’t have enough profits, but actually often for MSPs, the product is the one thing that’s actually looking pretty sound. So good to have you on the show. Thank you very much for joining us because we are going to be looking ahead at this year and things you can do with your business this year.
I always think this time of year is an amazing time to be a business owner. You can look at what went well and what didn’t go so well last year, and we all do it naturally. Whether you believe in New Year’s resolutions or just the natural energy of a brand new year, we all look ahead at this time and it feels fresh new and we can do all these really cool things.
That’s what we’re going to talk about today. Before we do, let’s just explore your background a little bit. You said you were a business turnaround expert. Let’s assume there’s some people listening to us and watching us right now that don’t know what that is. Could you explain what that is and how you got into it?
Yeah, so I think it’s basically a multicultural turn on executive. What I mean by that is I’m coming to companies that already exist. I’m entrepreneur in spirit, less in practice, so it’s less about me starting my own businesses, but I’m a fascinated person about going to existing businesses. I believe in sustainable growth. I deal specifically with small to medium sized companies, and I’ve been around the industry more about digital and stuff for over 20 years. I’ve worked in places like China and India and Belgrade and Latin America. So I’m really a very multicultural person and I’d like to think that every business is very simplistic and has very basic things inside of it, and my approach to it is really on the fundamentals.
Got it. So when you do a business turnaround, what exactly do you do? Let’s assume that it’s a business that’s in some kind of distress, do you go in and you look at that business and you kind of take that, it’s a cliche, but that helicopter view and you look at the big things that are going right, or do you get your sleeves dirty and jump in and start to fix all the problems that have been mounting up?
Well, I’m absolutely a sleeves dirty type of person, which is why I like small businesses. Big businesses have a very different type of problems, in small businesses it’s pretty much always the fundamentals. I like going into the financials and P and Ls. I like to understand everything around the business. And I think part of the qualities that I have is very quickly understanding the landscape. And I would go into the business models, I would go into the financials, I would go into the people and the operations. I would talk to the owners. And I think that would be the first steps is just to get, alright, this is just a holistic view of what’s going on, where do we stand? And then we go and hit the next phase of it.
And from your experience, for the small businesses that you’ve worked with, and most of the people listening to this and watching this, they own their business. They own their MSP. We typically aim this podcast at smaller businesses that’s sort of up to 25, 30 staff, which I think is the vast majority of MSPs anyway. In your experience, where do most small businesses go wrong? Are there trends or does it tend to be a unique problem for each business that you look at?
I do think there are unique problems, but I think they stem from fairly common problems.
I think most small business owners of MSPs tend to just fall into the day-to-day. We get used to our own problems and our own way of doing and seeing things, and then we get a little bit trapped.
So sometimes it’s a business problem where the business model just doesn’t make sense and there’s something around it that doesn’t make sense. Sometimes it’s the people, for example, people is an interesting thing. People are critical to any business as everyone will agree to it. But I think sometimes the cultures don’t mesh or we just want to give people another chance or we just can’t get outside of it. There is something with regards to how a business model connects to the people and whether they are inspired and back, is something that is critical. So yeah, it is quite unique to a business, but I think they all stem from fundamental kind of problems.
Yeah, I’m smiling inside because when I first started my first business back in 2005, an early mentor of mine said, anytime there’s a problem in the business and it’s a big problem, regardless of what it is, go home, go into your bathroom, look in the mirror, and there’s the cause of the problem. Which was absolutely correct, of course, I think as business owners we are kind of the biggest asset and the biggest liability to the business. We are the thing that drives it forward, and especially for MSPs, they’re often the greatest technical resource in the business. But I know I’m the greatest liability in my business because I’ve surrounded myself with staff whose job it is to stop me from doing stupid things or meddling in stuff that works, and they keep me out of the day to day because that’s just best for everyone. It really is. So I can focus on the big picture stuff.
Okay, let’s start looking forwards then. So here we are, January, we’ve got a whole brand new shiny year. It’s an exciting one. It ends in a five. I think if it ends at a five or a zero, it’s a big year. What kind of thinking do you think business owners, MSP owners, should be doing at this time of year? Should they be thinking just about the next quarter or should they be thinking about the year? Is this time to start thinking longer than that?
I like to think of a businesses like a book. I’m a very big believer that in businesses, there’s chapters, every year is a chapter, so I look at it as chapters. I would be hoping that companies start a little bit earlier, but let’s just say I would like to plan my year in advance, the year’s goals and objectives. And I know sometimes it sounds frightening, but I want to bring it back to earth. It doesn’t have to be a big thing. It is really, really important that you would identify what would be your priorities for the year. The priorities for the year would stem from what happened last year and the years before. How do you evaluate what happened last year? How do you even categorise, how do you name? Last year, I really like naming a year as is a name. That was the year that I was having a breakthrough. That was the year that something happened. There is a certain kind of headline to each year.
You would go through that and then you would try to understand what happened not only for you as a business, but outside in the market. Where do things stand? This will give you enough guideline kind of points to say what should be the priorities inside of your business. And maybe it’s because of things that you want to work on, maybe it has to do with opportunities. It can’t be more than three, three to four. That is the priorities. From there, you set the goals. Obviously have revenue goals, set revenue goals that you are committed to. A goal is supposed to be something that you’re doing, not something that you’re hoping to happen. Don’t just throw numbers out there that you’re going to have 50% of it.
There’s goals in it that you would want to achieve and focus not only on the revenue, focus on actually the things that drive the revenue. Then I would, at the beginning of the year, I would go to the Q1, a Q1 will have the similar kind of breakdown of objectives and goals and they will all stem from the same thing of the year. So that’s the Q1. What are the things that we want to be able to have and see and achieve in this quarter that will drive us, that will be part of that yearly thing. Now, of course, businesses may have a three to five year plan or they want to dream something a little bit ahead of it, which is fine. I think it’s something definitely to do. I personally find it really hard to do too long. It’s just hard for me to imagine. And I think sometimes business owners find themselves in the same kind of place. So I would not be afraid to just stick to the year. But I would definitely evaluate where I am versus the year before. That would be a Q1. And then as you move through the year, you would go to your Q2, do your Q3, do Q4, and you would do that by looking back at what happened.
Yeah, no, I love that. And I’m going to paraphrase something you said halfway through your answer there, which was about a goal being something you actually want to achieve, which means you have to take action towards it. So a goal isn’t just something you think, oh, it’d be nice to double revenue this year, because without any action, without any change, obviously that’s not going to happen.
Now it’s interesting you talk about Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4, because to me that feels like a very corporate thing. And I had a corporate career, I was a journalist and a radio presenter from the age of 19, oh no, 18 I think, to 30, 31, and that was a big corporate environment. So even though I worked in a small radio station, it was part of a big corporate. And increasingly what was fun at the beginning became more corporate at the end of my media career, and it was one of the reasons I left. Because it was all about quarterly targets and quarterly this and quarterly that. Do you think real small business owners like you and me and the MSPs listening to this and watching this, do you think we think in terms of quarters, because often it’s quite hard for us to say, here’s some activity that’s going to happen in this quarter. If there’s just you and like three staff, it’s a case of here’s what we hope we’re going to get done, but we can’t guarantee it. Is that your experience?
You know what, that’s a good thing. The last thing I want is for me or for MSPs and business owners to think of this as a corporate. That’s one of those things, I hate it every time people about processes, there’s something jittery about me that rejects even the name of a process. Even though the things that we do are really processes in their own right. The idea is not to do something that will now get you nervous or will now take you too much time. The quarterly way to look at it, you got to be able to break it down to quarters. The reason for that is if you don’t break it down, then you are very likely going to end up at the end of the year looking back into it. And I was like, oh my God, you might not even remember what you even started.
So it’s not about making you good or bad. You’re not in front of a judge, you’re not in front of jury. There’s no one out there that is going to scream at you or anything. Honestly, it’s you. And if you have someone else inside of your team that you trust, I highly recommend doing it with more than one person, it gives you more perspective. So go out there and, first of all, distinguish between priorities and goals. Priorities are the areas inside of the company that is important for us to keep in mind, these are the areas. Goals are the actions that we want to do, that are stepping stones, that is what we need to be able to do.
Focus on stuff that you can or focus on progress and focus on things that you can do, and don’t worry about it if it’s not big enough, maybe it’s part of something that you would want to do. At the end of the day, if you want to be able to achieve something, there is a path to get there, there are actions to be taken, and there is going to be, I guess the success rate. It’s part of the business. I want to be able to reach that, and it’s like, okay, but how are we going to be able to reach it? What is the path to it? It’s exactly that. It’s drawing yourself with a path. It’s a yellow brick road. It’s not a straight line, and nothing will happen if you’re going to have to stray away in the meantime. But I believe that instead of feeling corporate, you’ll actually feel good.
Yeah, I mean, I guess the only advantage of thinking corporate is if you underperform in a corporate environment, you get fired. And it was interesting you said earlier that you’re not responsible to anyone as the business owner, which again, I think is one of the double-edged sword things of being the business owner. You don’t get fired for poor performance. You promise yourself that this year, 2025, we’re going to do this thing, whatever this thing is, this growth thing. And then you get to December and you’re like, oh, yeah, we never got round to that. You don’t get fired, which I guess is good. It means you can keep going and the marathon just keeps going year after year. The downside is the fact that you can’t take your kids to Disney or you can’t buy a new house or a better car. Because you haven’t put the growth in, you haven’t generated more profits to allow you to increase your personal income. That’s the only downside of it. But there we go.
Paul, think of it as something of a reminder. It’s almost like a quarterly reminder of what is it that we wanted to do and what we thought was the right way to take it. And we may decide to change a thing, maybe our thinking was not right. It’s a reminder. It’s a constant reminder of what is important. And probably if it’s not one of those 1, 2, 3, this is not important. You know how many times we’re dealing with stuff that is unrelated to our success, but we’re still saying for some reason we’re still prioritising it. In my book, if it’s not part of those priorities and kind of goals, it doesn’t really matter.
Which is the perfect thing to end on, because I think you’re absolutely right with that. And reminding yourself constantly of the things that you should be doing is a massive thing, especially for MSPs whose very job, of course is to be distracted by the people that they’re supporting and all those thousand other things. Yeah, they’re important, but they’re not important in terms of growing the business. So thank you, thank you very much for that insight. Let’s just finish off by telling us how can we get in touch with you? What’s the best way to find you on LinkedIn, and what do you do to help people? How do you make money?
First of all, I’m an executive, like others, so I also do the things that I preach. It’s what I do. But I love helping businesses. I’m fascinated by businesses. I’m fascinated by MSPs. Anyone can reach me on LinkedIn, and I’m going to be very happy to be there to support exactly that kind of path and be that sounding board to it. And sometimes it’s that bell that reminds us what it is important, what is not, and just helping us settle down. Let’s just settle down, let’s relax, let’s put our path together. I would love to be a person that helps MSPs succeed and business owners to just keep the path, keep the path that they’re set off to and have their confidence in it and feel good about it.
Ryan from an MSP in San Diego is quite new to the podcast. He’s been going through past episodes and would like some clarity on some advice that he’s heard to do with his website. His question is: Why is it so important to get my website fixed first and quickly?
Decision makers don’t pick an MSP logically i.e. with their brain. The brain just rubber stamps what the heart has already decided. And this happens at every stage of the sales process, especially in that early research phase when they’re Googling around finding IT support companies that might be worth speaking to.
Here’s how it works… they’ll enquire because they like you, or not enquire because they don’t like you. Their decision on whether they like you or not will be made a hundred percent on the packaging of your business. And the packaging of your business is your website. The saying says, don’t judge a book by its cover, but we do, don’t we? And product companies have known for decades that the look and feel of the packaging, directly affects sales. Why is this so? Because our judgments of what’s inside are formed by what’s on the outside.
Before someone can actually sample the service you have on offer as a client. The only way they have to judge you is your packaging. So let me put this in the most no nonsense way I can. If your website is old, looks awful and is hard to use, you’ll struggle to get new clients. It will scare off any decent prospects that you generate. It really is as simple as that. So fix your website.
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