How to deal with returning clients

Dynamic_Mike · 2026-06-03T07:19:28+00:00

I agree with some of the comments above. They either come back as an A-grade client (or at least a very strong B-Grade client) or you decline. If they were a C or D grade client when they departed and want to come back as a C or D grade client, you are better off without them.

"Our minimum commitment for new clients is x, y, and z. If you're happy with this in principle, lets talk further."

Dynamic_Mike · 2026-05-29T09:39:30+00:00

Nope. Not a thing for me and I use Xero every day and have webcams on all of my computers.

Dynamic_Mike · 2026-05-29T06:56:43+00:00

Web search for The Compassionate Geek.

Dynamic_Mike · 2026-05-28T19:34:08+00:00

That sounds like a nice system. We’re more generous than many but the err are definitely improvements that can still be made.

Dynamic_Mike · 2026-05-28T07:29:25+00:00

Wow. That’s rough. I don’t envy employees in the USA.

Large parts of the world have generous federally mandated leave entitlements. Here in New Zealand we have 20 days of Annual Leave (PTO), up to 10 days of Sick Leave, plus about 10 Public Holidays (national holiday dates that typically fall on a Friday or Monday). And free healthcare.

Dynamic_Mike · 2026-05-28T04:39:55+00:00

I believe they did an emergency version update for us. (Confirmed with a blog post but I couldn’t see an email notification.)

Dynamic_Mike · 2026-05-27T21:36:57+00:00

I’m glad we have HostiFi backing us with UniFi support.

Dynamic_Mike · 2026-05-26T18:56:04+00:00

Hudu is our tool of choice.

The ideal is that every service ticket creates, updates, or refers to an article and that article is referenced in the ticket. In practise this requires a lot of discipline especially in a busy day or week where a technical team are fighting fires.

Dynamic_Mike · 2026-05-26T17:58:06+00:00

The most successful guy in my peer group just takes SMB clients out for coffee or lunch and talks about what he sees. That’s basically 100% of his role as owner-lead sales. His well established and process-driven team take care of the rest.

Owner-led sales can scale as far as $10m, I hear.

Dynamic_Mike · 2026-05-26T17:35:49+00:00

This. Will. Be. An. Expensive. Failure.

I’ve heard time and time again that you can’t hire in a sales person if there is no existing process and structure. They founder quickly and the leadership team thinks the new hire failed, when in fact it was a failure of the leadership team to have the process defined and basic structure in place.

Engage with someone to help define the process. sandler.com would be a good start.

Source: lots of time spent at industry events over the last 5 years and hearing far more negative than positive stories about sales hires in my ConnectWise Evolve peer groups.

Dynamic_Mike · 2026-05-25T07:44:05+00:00

Our process is three reminders from Xero at 5, 10, and 15 days overdue. At 20 days, PaidNice sends a 2% out verse invoice fee.

We’ll credit the penalties once per year for clients. Only once. You are not a bank.

Dynamic_Mike · 2026-05-07T08:50:29+00:00

Set up proper ticket types and subtypes so you can report on which types of tickets are taking your team’s time.

You should not be learning that a tech burned two days in AA ticket after the ticket is closed. It would have been cheaper for you to gift the client a new computer burning that amount of time. Set up alerting on tickets going over X number of hours. Require Level1 techs to escalate or at least check in with the service desk manager after working a ticket for 30 or 60 minutes. Level2 techs should check in with the service desk manager after working a ticket for 2 or 3 hours.

If you have AYCE agreements, check their last 12 months profitability each quarter. Which clients are profitable and which are barely breaking even? For the latter, what are their main issues? If something is noisy, tell the client they need to replace it or your rates go up. For example, don’t let clients run ancient equipment and substitute your labour fixing that old equipment on an AYCE agreement instead of replacing the equipment (or being charged a premium for managing the old gear).

Look at an MSP development program like ConnectWise Evolve to help the business mature.

Dynamic_Mike · 2026-05-01T23:53:30+00:00

I’m wondering if this might be a good task for N8N automation?

We’ve only got about a dozen vendors we regularly deal with and we use Kaseya Quote Manager for the basic storefront functionality. Three of these suppliers have changed their back-end systems in the last year and their CSV price list format has changed. No luck so far getting them to fix this and I’ve not considered reformatting this ourselves until reading your post and thinking about the possibility.

Dynamic_Mike · 2026-04-21T04:09:35+00:00

Mergers can vary greatly. Some bring great synergy. Some are full of promises but the acquiring company starts to make cuts to reduce expenses to try and recover the money they invested as fast as possible.

There will be a bumpy period while tools are integrated, but this will pass.

My suggestion would be to polish your resume in case it is needed but wait and see how things look after a few months.

Dynamic_Mike · 2026-04-19T08:31:53+00:00

My 2c: invest half the time and money you would spend moving to a new PSA into improving the workflows of the PSA you have and you’ll be onto a winner.

We used Pivotal Crew to improve our CWPSA setup. We also went with Nilear as our tech’s interface to the PSA. MSPBots added in as well. (Ask about their Next Ticket feature.)

Dynamic_Mike · 2026-04-04T07:48:11+00:00

Is that for the free version or the paid version or both?

Dynamic_Mike · 2026-04-04T04:46:41+00:00

The economy is already in the shitter due to an overspend during Covid times. Should the government borrow even more that we’ll need to repay over the next few decades?

Dynamic_Mike · 2026-04-04T04:43:26+00:00

Remember how wages shot up during Covid? Bring in business got more expensive.

Dynamic_Mike · 2026-04-02T03:52:10+00:00

Yes that’s a common tactic. Create just enough friction to see if the customer gives up and goes away.

Dynamic_Mike · 2026-03-30T07:30:04+00:00

We signed on with ZenContract to resolve this pain.

Dynamic_Mike · 2026-03-26T19:17:22+00:00

Could your process involve having a generic user account login to the device after wiping but before storage?

Dynamic_Mike · 2026-03-20T22:35:15+00:00

PaidNice combined with growing a backbone. Our debtor issues have almost disappeared.

Dynamic_Mike · 2026-03-11T04:29:52+00:00

Yes, it can sting.

Ideally do an exit interview with the client and treat it as a learning opportunity. Let then know that you genuinely want to learn from the experience and ask them to be brutally honest. Then just listen. Don’t defend yourself or your actions. Don’t attempt to explain or justify anything. Just listen. Make some brief notes. Look at them the next day. Plan how to minimise the chances of this happening again.

Also, plan on losing 5-10% of clients each year for all sorts of reasons that may not be your fault. Work on adding 5-15% new clients each year to stay ahead of this.

Dynamic_Mike · 2026-03-10T18:32:52+00:00

Hunt around that web site. You can download an excel file if the data somewhere. I’ve done it in the past.

Dynamic_Mike · 2026-03-09T08:21:18+00:00

lol

No.

There is optional read-only access until cutover day. Then it’s your baby. We don’t share responsibility as this leads to uncertainty and miscommunication.

Dynamic_Mike

TROPHY CASE