The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing Edge

Welcome to Episode 308 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week…

• The 3 big reasons your best technicians might leave you: Surely one of the greatest fears of any MSP is that of losing one of your key technicians. Let’s explore the three big reasons why they might leave and what you can do to address those.


• How to turn tech newbies into your MSP’s biggest fans: If you confuse your prospects and clients with technology, it’s likely they will disengage and divert their attention elsewhere. Everything needs to be explained in the easiest possible way.


• Control freak? Your MSP may struggle to grow: Business owners are control freaks and often get so caught up in the details that they struggle to grow. My special guest shares how he could help you to improve your business by letting go.


• Paul’s Personal Peer Group: Have you ever considered starting a podcast for your MSP? Here’s a few things you should consider before you dive in…

The 3 big reasons your best technicians might leave you

There are many fears that MSP owners have. One of them is of course being breached, another one is running out of cash. But surely one of the greatest fears is that of losing one of your key technicians. And I’m so sorry to even bring this up, but it’s something that we do need to talk about because there are always very specific reasons why any employee leaves any business.

I want to explore the three big reasons that technicians might leave you so you can address those in your MSP before something terrible happens.

You’ve probably heard that people don’t quit businesses, they quit managers or owners… whoever’s managing them.

Well, this is absolutely true, and in fact, studies have consistently shown that 75% of voluntary exits are due to the boss and not due to the role itself. Another survey that I found on Google show that 57% of employees left their job because of frustrations with their manager or leadership.

So here are the top three specific reasons that a technician might leave your business:

The first is poor management – a lack of support, micromanagement, or even bad communication. Managers who don’t coach, who don’t listen or who don’t trust their people well they drive them away.

The second reason is no meaningful growth or opportunities. High performers crave challenge and progression, and without it they get bored or worse, they leave.

And the third reason is feelings of being undervalued or unrecognised. If your techs aren’t getting feedback, recognition or meaningful rewards, they’ll just look for a place that gives them those things.

But now for the good parts and how to flip the script and keep your top tech talent engaged, motivated, and loyal:

Number one – coach them, train them, invest in them. Make development a habit, not just lip service. Training, whether you do this yourself or whether you pay for them to have training, it boosts retention massively and tailored development plans show that you’re serious about their future. Plus, if you invest in leadership, you won’t end up with accidental managers who drive people away. And of course that’s good because as you can develop managers who work for you, it’s going to be easier for you to hand over the reins for the business at some point when you want to take life a little bit easier. And we do get there, I promise you we do.

Number two – give them room to grow and give them meaningful work to do. Don’t let them get bored because they’re doing meaningless tasks all the time. Instead, provide them with challenging work to do. There’s something called job sculpting where you give them challenges that are designed specifically to their role to push them, to encourage them to grow, to expand their brain and do new things. And if they’re doing that and they can see there’s a clear path upward, that’s a very motivational job for anyone to do.

And number three – recognise and support them. So feedback is so important, especially in an MSP. That means doing regular one-to-ones, just be 5 – 10 minutes just sitting down, chewing the fat. Or you can structure it around what’s going well and what’s not going so well. You should also do public praise wherever you can, even if it’s just in front of the rest of your team. And small rewards go a very long way as well. Just a candy bar, a chocolate bar, a beer, something like that. It doesn’t have to be expensive, but if it’s something that that person really likes, like their favourite chocolate bar, then that’s a huge thing. And I would create a culture of appreciation as well where you appreciate your team and your team are all appreciating each other. It can’t be fake, you have to just do it, you have to show appreciation to your people and you’d be surprised how quickly they will start to show appreciation to each other. And this reduces staff turnover and builds loyalty.

And then of course, the other thing that you need to do is to make sure that your business and everyone’s direct manager, if that’s not always you, offers support and support for absolutely everything, not just what’s happening in their work, but what’s happening in people’s home lives as well. This matters so much.

So let’s just recap that your best techs leave for three big reasons: poor management, lack of growth, or feeling unvalued. Actually it can be all of those things, but by investing in training, offering them opportunity and showing genuine appreciation, you can turn things around and make sure that your best techs would never, ever want to leave.

How to turn tech newbies into your MSP’s biggest fans

Come on, let’s face it. Compared to you, every potential client is a tech noob and you need to impress them. But then again, you don’t want to blind them with science, with technology science. If you go over their head, you’ll put them off and they’ll never buy from you, but do the opposite and they’re much more likely to sign up to come and join you.

So how does someone as knowledgeable about technology as you find that common ground between you and the prospect? Do this right and it could just win you a brand new client.

The things that MSPs routinely deal with every day are often baffling for ordinary owners and managers.

And this hit home for me a few years back when I wrote a book about email security and I gave it to my MSP Marketing Edge members to use. So the idea is they can put their name on the cover and they can give it away on their website or use it in real life as a 48 page business card. The book is called Email Hijack. In fact, we’ve just refreshed it for 2026 for our members, and it tells the fictitious story of a business owner whose email is compromised and £12,000 (or $15,000) is stolen from his business bank account. It shows how easily that can happen.

Now, it took me 5,023 words to explain email security in a way that people who don’t know or frankly don’t care about it will understand it and in a way that they’ll be motivated to protect themselves and their company’s email. And that’s the challenge. When your world and their world collide. You’ve got a fundamental problem to overcome when trying to explain critical concept to ordinary people. Because even in 2025, they don’t care about all of this tech stuff anywhere near as much as you do.

When someone’s a little bit confused by something, they’re much more likely to dismiss it, to ignore it and move on than they are to take the time to understand it. We live in a very busy world, don’t we? And our brains are constantly trying to make sense of that world. So if you confuse someone with technology and acronyms, it’s more likely their brain will disengage and they’ll divert attention elsewhere.

You must see this with your own clients, right? Unless they’ve got a very specific problem that has to be fixed for a very particular reason, they’ll put up with a fudge, won’t they? Or they’ll just make do, because really they don’t understand what the problem is and their brain’s just not interested anyway. This was the challenge with writing that book to explain email security, blended layers of security, how hacks can happen, and how something as simple as one hacker getting into one email account can be disastrous for the entire business, and can see it lose thousands and thousands out of its bank account. And all of this had to be done in a way that non-technical people would understand.

That’s why it took me 5,000 words and I had to lock myself away in a luxury hotel for three nights to write it. True story. This is the personal burden that I carry. So the challenge for you is to break down what you do into the smallest possible, most easily understood chunks whenever you are talking to prospects. And equally as important, clients. The second they don’t get it, they will disengage and you won’t get the sale.

Life’s going to be harder for you. Everything needs to be explained in the easiest possible way. And by the way, this is not in any way about talking down to them, far from it. This is about you dropping down to their level and looking at things as they look at it. There’s a phrase I’ve been using for a few years that explains this concept really well, and I can’t remember which book I’ve stolen it from, but here it is, to influen