Ask most MSP owners what their biggest struggle is, and lead flow often comes back as the answer. 

And what is the most common way to get leads? Usually it’s a referral. What’s wrong with referrals as a lead source? Absolutely nothing. They are often the most high-quality leads and are easier to convert because they come with an implicit promise of trust. But word of mouth referrals are not a scalable lead source. They absolutely have a place in the customer acquisition motion, but they can’t be the only thing.

There are a lot of ways to find leads, here are just a few:

• Digital Marketing/Social Media  – Leveraging the power of the internet to run ad campaigns
• Trade Associations – Developing industry-specific expertise makes these a promising prospecting ground
• Community Activities – It’s old school and will likely be with us forever. Raising your business profile in the community is a sure way to get more prospects in the funnel
• Podcasts/Webinars – Sharing valuable information is a great way to brand your business as an expert shop in a given solution
• Cold calling/Email marketing – Not as powerful as in the past, but in the hands of capable marketers and salespeople, still effective
• Professional networks – Sites like LinkedIn can help people find a business and raise that business’ profile

Most partners will do at least one of these things, but in the end it’s often the referral that gets the new leads. 

These are all good activities that should be pursued as strongly as possible. But there’s another way to get increased business. And that’s by getting more of the available customer spend. 

When a person becomes more specialized, there’s a natural tendency to increasingly focus on the things related to that specialization, and tune out the rest as noise. This is natural. Having made a conscious decision to focus on one thing or suite of things, people will filter out the things that are not in their wheelhouse. 

There is an opportunity cost to not leaving your comfort zone.

If your business is centered around M365, Security, and Business Continuity, how closely are you listening when a customer is thinking about Point of Sale devices? Or a new HR solution? At best you may be thinking about how those projects will impact my current practice. 

We recently signed up a partner who was routinely turning down customer requests for CRM solutions. Not every day, and not even every week or month, but often enough that they noticed a trend. Because they had no trusted relationships in this space, they did not feel able to make a recommendation to their customers. 

Fast forward to today and they are actively promoting the solution to their customers and to other partners that they do business with. 

Getting more leads will continue to challenge business owners for the foreseeable future. But let’s not forget that leads in themselves are not the goal. The goal is increased business, and that can come from existing customers just as well as from new ones. Having a trusted partner able to provide advanced business solutions to customers is a great way to increase revenue, without expensive investments in new resources or certifications.