Customer satisfaction is one of the most important aspects of any business. It doesn’t matter how much you know if you can’t demonstrate value. This may be even more true for MSPs. After all, there are lots of companies and lots of products and tools that tell you they can help you. It’s up to you to figure out what works best for your business model, your budget and your customer needs. There’s no one right answer, and no one can do it all. We all need help. Being an active participant in a community or a group like the Global Technology Industry Association (GTIA) is a great place to start.
I started in the IT channel almost 25 years ago. Of course, back then we didn’t call ourselves an MSP. We evolved out of break-fix and networking as the MSP model started to take shape. Just over 12 years ago I joined another company—a VAR looking to spin up a managed services practice—shortly after that I was introduced to what is now GTIA. I quickly realized that going to (then CompTIA) events and talking to fellow members was an incredible opportunity to learn how to grow a business and a career.
Over the years, I’ve met so many people and had so many conversations with people who had similar experiences and challenges with what they were working on. I learned how they worked through different challenges and bounced ideas off each other. I could easily ask if anyone was doing what I was trying to do or if I should do something a different way. Getting feedback on what worked and didn’t work was priceless. Granted, we specialize in K-12 education, and there are some tools that we use that few others do, a lot of the methodologies—how you build your service, how you present your service—universally fit together.
Related: Read more about Christopher Infante's journey with GTIA on LinkedIn.
Learn Together, Succeed Together
Being part of a community has helped me from both a personal and professional perspective. There is an abundance of good information, guidance and people willing to help. I have yet to come across anybody in GTIA unwilling to help.
A few examples:
- A few years ago, I was invited to a working group that was developing material to help MSPs and got teamed up with Erick Simpson, who literally wrote the book on managed services and founded MSP University. I used many of the things I learned from his material in the first MSP I helped build. It was great to be able to collaborate with someone I consider one of the greatest influencers in the MSP space.
- I still vividly remember a few years ago when Juan Fernandez shared his personal story. It was extremely powerful, and I realized that I had been through some of what he’s been through. It was reassuring to know there are other people like me going through similar situations. And it’s all OK. We can all grow from mistakes we’ve made.
- Businesswise, we were looking to build a cybersecurity practice for the schools we serve. At a reception during the Communities and Councils Forum (CCF), I started talking with Vince Crisler and I learned about the product he built. We used that information and became one of his partners. That was a differentiator for us in the market. No one else was doing it at the time and it let us show value where other people were not doing that. It’s now an essential part of our offering.
Everyone is open, honest and giving. And now with everything I’ve gotten, I think it’s my responsibility to give back and help others from the things I’ve learned.
Last year, I served as a mentor in the GTIA Mentorship Program, where I helped an up-and-coming technology leader. It was a great way to lend a hand to someone who may be following in my footsteps.
Forecast: Sunny Skies Ahead
Looking ahead, what I’m most excited about for GTIA is that it’s nearly a blank slate, an empty canvas that an entire community—everybody—has some input in to help shape. And it can be bigger than anybody ever imagined.
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Christopher Infante is the director of engineering and managed services at Forward Edge and an executive council member of the GTIA North America Community.
