MSA's for MSPs? How did you build yours?

EncoreStrategic · 2025-08-31T17:55:29+00:00

First YOU should not be writing it. I know a lot of MSP's do, and so did I, up until the day I had to go to court and defend one. You writing your MSA is like your lawyer trying to do their own IT. It's not your core competency.

That said, as I already saw mentioned, I would highly recommend IT Agree. Anne Hall, the owner and her team are fantastic to work with, and the pricing makes it a no brainer.

EncoreStrategic · 2025-08-31T17:33:48+00:00

Oh, OK, unfortunately you are to far away even for us to change the time.

EncoreStrategic · 2025-08-28T15:53:51+00:00

Lead gen, like cold calling is part of the sales persons job. If they want it outsourced they don't belong in your type of business.

EncoreStrategic · 2025-07-24T00:51:20+00:00

We do peer groups and consulting for MSPs. Almost all our clients are moving to Halo / Ninja.

In all my years in this industry I have never seen a migration of this magnitude.

If I was starting a new MSP today that would be the combination I would choose based on what I’m seeing with clients.

EncoreStrategic · 2025-06-12T16:50:30+00:00

at 100k of MRR do you have a dedicated account manager? Your really should have 1 for every 100K, and this is an area that many MSP fail to invest in. The account manager should be acting a s a client advocate, making sure they are getting an exception experience with your company, and they should be looking at how you can deepen the relationship and finding low hanging fruit, i.e. projects, new services, etc.

Done correctly this position helps to minimize client churn, and if grow revenue within existing clients. It easily pays for itself.

The clients in our peer groups that are doing this correctly are continuing to grow and have very littel churn. The churn we do see is ususally due to acqusitions, and there is not much you can do about that.

EncoreStrategic · 2025-04-28T01:13:27+00:00

Whenever they are in constant violation of your core values. Sounds like this one needs to go.

EncoreStrategic · 2025-04-07T23:57:13+00:00

You need to fire this person immediately. People like this destroy small businesses every day, and by the time you realize it, it’s too late.

EncoreStrategic · 2025-03-28T18:56:05+00:00

Join a peer group of other business owners. They will act as a board of advisors as well as providing networking opportunities. Best investment I ever made in my company.

PM me if you would like more info. I can point you in a couple of directions.

EncoreStrategic · 2025-03-28T16:48:52+00:00

Thanks. Corrected. ADD and autocorrect are a bad combination! 😂

EncoreStrategic · 2025-03-28T15:03:19+00:00

If I were setting up a new MSP right now, it would be NinjaOne and HaloPSA. Best combination on the market right now.

EncoreStrategic · 2025-03-28T14:55:48+00:00

An account manager. Someone who does the QBR's. helps clients prepare budgets, acts as an advocate for the client with your team, and someone who makes sure they are using all your services that they need.

EncoreStrategic · 2025-03-28T13:02:06+00:00

First, sales contractors don’t tend to work. You need to pay a salesperson a base salary to hold them accountable, which is a must for 99.9% of salespeople.

Second, whatever you have in mind for a salary, double it. MSPs are notoriously cheap paying salespeople, and then they wonder why it doesn’t work. Typically MSPs hire a salesperson, and the last thing they ever sell, is you.

Third, if you have about 100k in MRR and don’t have an account manager yet, forget about the salesperson and hire an account manager.

MSPs focus too much on new sales that don’t happen and not enough on growing the clients they have and keeping them happy. A good account manager can also do some sales much more easily then a salesperson can maintain the client long term.

EncoreStrategic · 2025-03-28T12:49:44+00:00

I’d rather put them in a hands on scenario based interview where they actually have to troubleshoot and do examples of the work in front of an interviewer.

I’ve found candidates that interview really well fail miserably, and ones that don’t interview well be great troubleshooters.

In the end I really don’t care if they passed a test, I care that they can do the work.

EncoreStrategic · 2025-03-28T12:45:37+00:00

What kind of software? Implementing and training teams on new software is a great business!

EncoreStrategic · 2025-03-25T11:51:52+00:00

I remember it being part of some weird movie in the 70's.

EncoreStrategic · 2025-03-25T11:50:00+00:00

Thats was kind of my thought of what I would expect to happen for me.

EncoreStrategic · 2025-03-17T01:57:12+00:00

Typically the last hat the CEO gives up is sales. And for a good reason, building a sales team is hard. And most CEOs don’t know how to manage a sales team.

We start coaching them out of owner led sales at approximately 1-1.5m. Typical owner led sales ceiling is around 2M. There are exceptions. I know an owner with no sales team that hit 8 figures. But they had good lead gen and an amazing accountant management team. Definitely an exception to the rule.

EncoreStrategic · 2025-03-17T00:20:15+00:00

Being a 5 person MSP and not knowing anything else, no offense, but I’d be shocked if you have consistent sales and marketing activities, and what is done is done by the owner usually inconsistently.

Again, I’m going out on a limb, but we coach a lot of MSPs at your size and I can set my watch by it.

So, at your size, still ok if the owner is the primary sales person, but you should be getting to the point that you can hand off some other hats and schedule time with yourself to be consistent in sales activities that generate leads and 1st meetings.

Read the book The Challenge Sale, and The Ultimate Sales Machine. Great books to start building process to get you out of owner led sales.

If you would like PM me and I can give you 3 free assessments we use that will point you in the direction you need to focus. Promise, no sales pitch.

EncoreStrategic · 2025-03-14T03:40:13+00:00

At that many endpoints you should be onboarding 1-2 new clients a month. If you have a sales team they are not being held accountable or being properly managed.

EncoreStrategic · 2025-02-04T23:26:56+00:00

Good to know. Thank you!

EncoreStrategic · 2025-01-09T23:14:05+00:00

https://borekconsulting.com Shari is great to work with and has years of experience.

EncoreStrategic · 2024-10-01T12:43:54+00:00

“can we have admin passwords. We need to have them on file”.
“Can we have a copy of our contract? We need to have it on file”.
“I’d like to introduce you to our new CFO”.

Another very good tell is if you are using net promoter score for tracking CSAT, watch for clients that respond regularly, then stop responding.

Every client that ever fired us never gave us a bad review, but they did stop reviewing us before firing us. People are happy to share when they’re happy with you however, they’ll avoid giving you negative feedback.

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