The best way for MSPs to delight existing clients dosen’t actually cost money… here’s 5 ways to do it. Also this week, how to turn your MSP’s success stories into 3 BIG marketing assets, and what if you sold your MSP to your employees?

Welcome to Episode 332 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge.

5 ways to delight your existing clients without spending a penny

One of the easiest ways to grow your MSP is also one of the least talked about. And it’s this… delighting the clients you already have. And before your brain jumps to discounts and gifts and free stuff or doing more work for nothing, let me stop you right there.

The best ways to delight your existing clients don’t cost money. They cost attention, they cost intention, and they cost you thinking a little bit differently about how clients experience working with you.

So let me give you five examples…

The first is proactively explaining what’s happening before clients feel the need to ask. So most client frustration isn’t caused by things breaking, it’s caused by uncertainty. To them, silence creates worry and worry creates friction, not good, right? So a simple update that says something like, “Hey, here’s what we’re working on for you right now, or here’s why we’re making this change and what you might notice.” Well, that can completely change how a client feels about you. They stop wondering, stop guessing, and just feel really reassured. And reassurance is hugely underrated in the channel, it really, really is.

The second way to delight clients is to remember what matters to them beyond just their IT and their technology. Clients feel delighted when they feel known, not remembered as just an account number or a contract size, but they’re known as a business and especially as people. So referencing things like previous conversations or remembering a big business priority for them or acknowledging a stressful period that they’ve mentioned. None of that costs you money, but it really builds emotional loyalty between you and them. In fact, you can make clients feel like they’re in a very safe pair of hands.

The third way to delight clients is to remove small annoyances that they’ve quietly learned to tolerate. Delight really comes from removing friction, not adding features. So give them clearer instructions, remove the need for them to ask follow-up questions, do better handovers, send cleaner emails, make the next steps more obvious for them. When something suddenly feels easier, clients really do notice, and they might not send you a thank you email, but if they feel it, then those feelings really add up over time.

The fourth way is to tell your clients what you’ve prevented, not just what you’ve fixed. MSPs are brilliant at quietly stopping bad things from happening, but terrible at talking about it. Clients rarely know what didn’t go wrong because of you. So when you explain the risks that you’ve reduced and the issues that you’ve headed off, the problems that never really became problems, then you reinforce the immense value of what you do. You remind them why they chose you in the first place.

The fifth way to delight clients without spending a penny is to make it safe for them to bring you bad news. This one is bigger than it sounds. Clients are delighted when they’re not judged, lectured, or made to feel stupid. You understand that, right? I do. Absolutely. When they feel psychologically safe and it is all about their feelings, they’re going to come to you earlier and not later. They’re going to be more honest and tell you the stupid things that they’ve done, which is good, right? They’re going to be more collaborative. In fact, they’re going to trust you more deeply. That’s exactly what we want from them. That’s the partnership that you want with your clients.

The common theme across all five of these is that delight doesn’t come from doing more. It comes from being more intentional. The MSPs who retain clients really well and grow accounts and earn referrals are not the ones constantly piling extras on top. They’re the ones who communicate clearly, remove friction, and show that they care. They help their clients to feel safe. And do you know what the best part is, right? You can start doing every single one of these things immediately without spending a single penny.

How to turn your MSP’s success stories into 3 BIG marketing assets

Most MSPs completely underestimate how powerful simple client stories are. You know that your team does great work every single week, fixing problems, preventing issues, and saving clients from themselves. But when do you ever stop to tell the rest of the world about the cool stuff that you achieve every day? Rarely? Well, that’s a huge shame because each one of those stories can be turned into three big marketing assets that will help you to build trust, attract new clients, and help your existing clients feel prouder than ever to work with you. Let me explain why stories sell better than almost any other kind of marketing.

Back a very long time ago, like 10 years ago back in 2016, when I first started helping MSPs with their marketing, I noticed how many of them struggled to stand out. Their websites all said the same things. They said things like, “We’re proactive. We care about security. We’re your trusted partner.” You know that. You’ve seen all of this before, but none of it cuts through. It didn’t back then and it doesn’t today.

So I’d asked the MSP to tell me about a client that they’d recently helped, and that was the point their eyes completely lit up. They’d say things like, “Oh, one of our clients was hit by ransomware, but we had them back up and running the same day.” Or, “We migrated a whole 100 user law firm to the cloud in one weekend.” And those stories were gold because they did what all good marketing should do. They demonstrated proof, not promises.

People trust your stories far more than they trust your claims. So let’s talk about what makes stories powerful.

The magic ingredient isn’t just the result, it’s the emotions created by the result. A great client story answers questions from their point of view, such as: what was at stake, what did it feel like before you fixed it, how much better is your life now. When your prospect can see themselves in that story, you’ve already won half the marketing battle. Their emotions will want you to look after their business, and emotions are pretty good at influencing the brain. I believe there are three assets hiding in every success story. And once you’ve got a great story, here’s how to make the most of it…

Number one, create a written case study. This is the easiest win. A simple one-page story with three sections… the problem your client had, what you did to solve it, and the result and the benefit that they enjoyed. You don’t need marketing fluff, just real details, quotes if possible, and maybe a photo, or if you have to a logo with their permission of course. And this then is perfect for your website, you can put it in proposals and definitely in onboarding packs as well. You need to keep selling in that first 90 days that you’re working with a client.

Number two, create a social media post. Take the most dramatic or emotional part of this story and turn it into a post. It might be something like, “When a ransomware attack hit one of our clients at 6pm on a Friday, they thought their weekend was ruined. Here’s how we had them fully operational again by 9pm that night.” It’s very short, it’s very visual, you can understand that, it’s very relatable. Posts like these build credibility faster than anything else that you can do.

Number three, create a video story. Now, this is the golden ticket. Grab your phone and record yourself or your client if they’re up for it, telling the story in their own words. It doesn’t need to be highly polished. For this kind of video, authenticity beats high production value every single time. And then you can reuse that clip on your website, on LinkedIn, in email newsletters, even in your proposals.

So here’s your challenge… go and find one story, just one. Ask your team, what’s something amazing that we’ve done for a client recently? Ask your clients, what have we done in the last few months that’s impressed you the most? And ask yourself, what was the biggest scare you had recently, but the resolution was a lot easier than you thought. Then write it up, post it, or record it. You’ve already done the hard tech work. Now made that hard work, work hard for you.

What if you sold your MSP to your employees?

Featured guest: Eric Brotman is Chairman of the Board and Chief Growth Officer of BFG Financial Advisors and Managing Principal of Brotman Consulting Group, LLC. He started in the financial planning industry in 1994 and launched a start-up in 2003 which has grown to over 20 employees and $900,000,000 in assets under management.

Eric is the author of three books including the award-winning “Don’t Retire…Graduate!” and hosts a podcast by that same name.

You might think this is the craziest idea that you’ve ever heard, but what if you sold your MSP to your employees really slowly over a number of years? In fact, what if that was your exit plan? So instead of selling out to one of the big consolidators or a local competitor or a venture capitalist group, instead you pass it over to your employees, but you do it really slowly.

You get the key people to buy into the business and you lock them into your business long before you’re ready to go. Maybe you think that’s a sensible