Chris Wiser interviews a speaker about growing MSP cash flow from existing customers instead of chasing new ones. The strategy: sell cybersecurity risk assessments and managed security services to clients you already have. One MSP owner, Brett Gallant, increased monthly recurring revenue five times in 18 months by focusing on this approach.
Have you ever wondered how to increase cash flow without actually having to go out and get new clients? Well, actually, have Mr. Chris Weiser here with us today. We are live from our quarterly live event here in Indianapolis, and I would love to hear your take on this. Is it possible to get cash flow without getting new customers?
I'd say actually majority of the cash flow you have at your disposal is available in your existing clients. Most MSPs have so much available cash flow that you're leaving on the table. Most of our existing clients in our elite program, that's where we have them start, is we have them go back to their existing client base, start with them, do cybersecurity risk assessments, go through the whole what we call running the play. So we have them run the play, and we are seeing a majority. In fact, I'll give you a great example. We are talking to Brett Gallant here. He's from Northern Canada. He went back, had, I think, 600 endpoints when he started with us, and 30K of MRR, roughly monthly recurring revenue in a year and a half, went back and 5xed his mrr with less endpoints. So there's so much money available in your existing client base, and it's so much. They already know you, like you, trust you. So much easier to go back and get a meeting with them. You just have to be confident enough in your sales process and everything you do to say, hey, look, we have to change. Things have changed. We have to do things a little bit differently. So I think, you know, absolutely, there's money left on the table. Absolutely. There is tons of available capital. You just have to be confident. You have to have a process, and you have to have a why to go back and talk to them.
Okay, so if, if our MSP is listening, are more on the break fix side of things, how do they do that? Is it just increasing the price of it? Like, what is the process for them to. To make that increase?
Yeah. So first of all, I will tell you your mindset as an MSP should be we can get leads to break. And then, you know, Cindy Phillips, our head sales coach, and I talk often about break fix as paid leads. Great opportunity. Now, if your entire client base is all break fix, we need to run the play on that entire client base is what I would do. So I would basically, here's the process and I'll just kind of lay it out for you. I would go back, I'd make a list of all your clients. I'd sort it by order of importance. Which is usually how big they are or maybe how much money they pay you.
Okay.
I would sit down and educate them about cybersecurity. Here's why you need to focus on cyber. Here's why you not just manage services, like managed services is a buzzword now. I would never actually use that term with a client. I would never talk about that. Here's why you need to focus on cybersecurity. Here's you're going to get hacked. Here's why you need to put these things in place. Namely, here's the why, guys, they need to establish a pattern that they cared about. We weren't negligent, we tried. We know we were potentially going to get hacked, but we did all the right things. So then somebody can basically somebody else can pay the bill. Insurance company can pay the bill. That's the goal. So we, we do that, we educate them and then our goal coming out of that sit down meeting is to get a cybersecurity risk assessment. Either, you know, on Break fix, I would, you know, depending on the relationship with the client and this is kind of a in betweener, I would probably charge them for it, but maybe not always. Right. The key is to not make the product or the service all about price. Because even with the csra, that's your cybersecurity risk assessment or the actual managed security product, whatever you're selling can't be commoditized, can't be about the product, it can't be the price point making the decision. It's we have to put these things in. And then your whole point of these sales process is to get them to understand this is why you need this. And this is now a necessity, not just a oh, this would be cool to have to maybe make our business more efficient kind of thing, which is the old way that we all used to do it. So that's my recommendation to go back to Break fix this. You know, we have hundreds of MSPs in our elite program. This is exactly what they do coming in break fix or fully managed.
Yeah, no, I think that's so true. I think that it, that the, the heaviness of this or it sounds like a lot of work is what keeps most MSPs back. So if you could give them one thing to do today to move them in that direction, what would it be?
You need to lead and sell cybersecurity. You need to start focusing on cybersecurity. Work on that now. We actually had a question come up literally this morning from we have a program for smaller break fix msps called our 0-10k program. I'm not sure if you saw that internally in our group chat, but it was about my guys. My staff is concerned that we're not cybersecurity experts. Partner with, you know, and here's a really important concept of what's happening in the MSP industry. You're probably not cybersecurity experts. I don't know that there is. Like, think about everybody and who is actually a cybersecurity expert anymore. So we'll start with that. Second of all, the MSP industry is moving much more towards a general contractor type play. So you become the manager of relationships versus being the expert itself. So partner with vendors. We have a ton of vendors here at our Indianapolis show. Partner with vendors that are the actual experts. A fully managed security operations center, maybe outsourced help desk. And then all you're doing is coordinating relationships and making sure that the eyes are dotted and the T's are crossed. Like that's. It's a different mindset. Think about, you know, in the construction world, and I say general contractor because most people can, can relate to that and can understand it, but in the construction world, is every general contractor a plumbing, a master plumber, a master electrician, a master.
They're like a matchmaker.
They're. Yeah, man, that's well said. I love that they are like a matchmaker and they're managing the relationship of the expert. So think about yourself more in that role than I have to be the expert of everything.
Yeah, no, I think that's so good. It also takes you off of the island of doing everything by yourself, which is probably why, why some of us may be in this rut to begin with. Like, oh, I had everything.
It's a majority like the typical MSP owner. I'll just take myself, for example. I was an MSP owner for 10 plus years. I was good at tech. I like to start a business. I started out as the engineer. Like I was the guy. But you have to be in a place in business where you're starting to mature and rip yourself out of the trenches like this. This is probably the hardest thing to do. Now personally, it wasn't super hard for me because I don't really like, I'm kind of lazy, actually. I mean, I don't want to be. I'm not a control freak. I think it's probably that's a better.
Way to say that.
We had some really good discussions with some speakers in the last couple days here in Indy about that control freak. Piece. We had Rico Abreu on our stage yesterday and Rico's a professional race car driver was talking about he really elevated even in his business, his racing business. He really saw himself elevate when he said, okay, I'm going to not be the control freak anymore and I'm going to start to delegate. It's the same conversation right to the experts.
It's the same delegate to the experts.
So he hired his team experts. Same thing as an msp. Get yourself out of the trenches and, and focus on being that general contractor mindset.
So good. So good. Okay, so with that we actually have several resources and we'll link them below this video right here. So check us out. Book a call with the team if you want to learn more about this process of how to increase your cash flow without actually having to go and get new clients to begin with. Thank you, Chris.
