Most MSP owners are “shocking” at marketing and processes, an MSP consultant who has just made his MSP maturity assessment free to use has claimed.
Since selling his own MSP, Mirus IT Solutions, to Advania UK forerunner IT Lab in 2019, Paul Tomlinson has helped around 15 MSPs scale and build.
Tomlinson this week moved an Excel spreadsheet he has used to benchmark his clients online and made it free for anyone to use (see here).
It poses 11 questions related to strategy, marketing, sales, pricing, products, service delivery, projects, security, finance, people and AI.
“For those sub-million-pound MSPs, there’s going to be a huge amount of ‘nos’, but it’s up to them to decide if they want to follow that as a roadmap to help them develop,” he told IT Channel Oxygen.
“Where people are typically weak is either in process or in marketing.
“Most MSPs are run by engineers, but they’re shocking when it comes to marketing, and they tend to not necessarily create processes within a business.
“They just get on and do things because they know the answers. But that lack of process is the thing that tends to inhibit people growing, because obviously as they scale the business, nobody does it the way the owner manager did it at the outset.
“Making sure that kind of maturity is embedded in the business really helps to accelerate things.”
Tomlinson has also beefed up the assessment to encompass feedback from MSP subject matter experts, including MSP marketing and finance gurus Paul Green and Daniel Welling.
“Paul in particular talked about growing the audience, rather than necessarily focusing on organic SEO and AI SEO. The people element is really important, but that’s something I’d forgotten to write down just because it comes naturally to me,” Tomlinson said.
“They should be aiming for £35-£40 a month”
According to recent research by Omdia, AI consumption-based pricing has triggered 60% of MSPs to rethink how they price managed services.
Tomlinson claimed the rise of AI tokens won’t “massively impact” the per-seat, per-month pricing model that has dominated IT support for decades.
“All of the AI toolsets we use in the MSP industry will allow us to deliver service more efficiently,” he added, however.
“There will be MSPs that decide they’re going to sell at a lower price because of that, and focus on doing a sort of landgrab approach.”
Although some MSPs Tomlinson speaks to are still charging “sub £20” a month, he claimed they should be aiming for between £35 and £45 depending on their geographic location.
“There are some real outliers. I was talking to a guy based in the North-East, and his target all-in-seat price is nearly £200 a month. I think he’s just gotten lucky, but it’s just not going to be achievable long term,” he said.
“One of the biggest wins I typically see when I start working with people is reviewing the price per endpoint,” Tomlinson added.
“One of the MSPs I worked with last year thought they were looking after about 4,500 devices, but were only actually billing for 3,700.
“Their problem wasn’t the actual price they charge per endpoint. It was the fact they weren’t increasing the prices as the customers were increasing the number of seats.”
“It’s a bit like having a personal trainer”
Most MSPs that approach Tomlinson are either looking to snag investment or sell up.
“I started working with probably the most successful one three years ago, and it’ll have a huge impact on the number they get when they exit,” he said.
“There are so many easy wins you find when there’s a fresh set of eyes on something.”
Tomlinson compared his job to his brief spell as a personal trainer (he co-founded and ran Fierce Gym between 2020 and 2024).
“I think the difference with working with someone like me or Lee Evans – who’s exited Vital and Air IT – is you’re working with a consultant who’s owned an MSP before.
“There’s a level of accountability they look for. It’s a bit like having a PT or an online coach.”
Tomlinson isn’t ncessairly looking to take on new clients, he stressed.
“Because I’m not tied to any vendors or chasing new business, there’s no reason to make it gated content,” he said of his MSP maturity assessment, which takes about an hour to complete.
“It’s not intellectual property. It’s just the common things I see in the MSP industry that if people paid attention to they’d level up in those different areas.”
Doug Woodburn is editor of IT Channel Oxygen
