Attention MSPs: You’re Also ‘Business Advisors,’ Not Just Tech Advisors

‘The folks that you’re doing business with are (about) people and processes too,’ says Zorus sales executive Chris Keith.

Chris Keith, senior vice president of sales and marketing at Zorus

MSPs and other channel players need to view themselves as general “business advisors,” not just tech advisors, as customers adapt to ever-changing technology, workplace and security challenges, the top sales executive at Zorus said.

Chris Keith, senior vice president of sales and marketing at Zorus, the Norwalk, Conn.-based cybersecurity company, told an audience Monday at The Channel Company’s XChange NexGen conference in Orlando, Florida that partners must still present themselves first and foremost as bringing technical expertise and competency to customers.

But he said the business landscape has changed since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly with the rise of remote working and the corresponding leap in workload, security and other challenges facing customers, he said.

So channel players need to listen to, and explore, customers’ concerns about a wide variety of business issues, not just technology issues, in order to provide clients with the best solutions. Specifically, they have to pay more attention to the “people and processes side” of businesses, Keith said.

“You’re absolutely a business advisor — and most definitely a next-gen MSP,” Keith told a roomful of mostly channel players. “That’s how you’re going to want to be positioning yourself.”

He compared the dual-roles strategy to how the National Football League and its commissioner, Roger Goodell, view their business. The NFL is a sports business. But it’s also a major entertainment business, Keith said.

“All of those (technology) things certainly do make sense,” he said of channel partners’ priorities. “But when you’re talking to business owners or people that aren’t as technical, there’s only so much that you can jam in here.”

Keith added: “The folks that you’re doing business with are (about) people-and-process too.”

And he added that CIOs are also increasingly concerned about people-and-process issues.

“(Technology) is always going to be a core competency of your go-to-market strategy and certainly your business model,” he said. “But where we see the largest areas for opportunity, both from a business expansion as well as, frankly, just a profit center standpoint, is going to be focusing on technological or software implementations for business processes and initiatives.”

He referred to Zorus’ web filtering and employee-engagement products as possible solutions to customers’ people-and-processes concerns.

For instance, employee-engagement software can help companies track how much, and when, remote employees are working, Keith said.

“We’re not going to be looking over someone’s shoulder 24/7, but we are going to be able to see if they‘re coming to work, when they’re coming to work, for how long they‘re working on different items and making sure that they absolutely are going to be doing what they say that they’re doing,” he said.

After his XChange presentation, Keith told CRN that Zorus will soon be announcing its intention to bring together its web filtering and employee-engagement offerings onto one platform.

Leonard Ozoemena, owner of Compass Solutions LLP, a Washington, D.C.-based MSP, said he agreed with Keith that channel partners need to increasingly think of themselves as “business advisors,” not just technology advisors, due to the changing market landscape.

“Too often we push our views and our solutions on clients,” Ozoemena said. “But to solve a problem, you need to listen to them and try to understand them. Let them talk before you say, ‘Here’s a solution.”

He added: “It can be any type of problem they’re facing. Just listen to them.”