Are You Walking Away From Future MSP Revenue?

You’ve heard the saying about not judging a book by its cover. We all nod along, and then we go right back to doing it in our own businesses. I almost did it with a client who ended up being one of our best.

If you own an MSP, you probably run the same mental checklist every time a new opportunity walks in. How many users? How many locations? What are they spending? Are they even looking for managed services? Is there recurring revenue here, or is this a project that eats a week of my calendar?

Good Questions, Incomplete Answers

Those are good questions! You should be asking them. You can’t chase every little project that lands in your inbox, and your team’s time has real value.

But those questions only tell you what a company looks like today. They don’t tell you what it could look like in five years.

Many years ago, we got a referral from a small company. I looked at the opportunity and felt nothing. At that point we were focused on building recurring revenue and moving clients to the cloud. We wanted long term relationships and managed services, not a calendar full of one off project work.

This company was small. The opportunity was small. I knew the owner a little through networking circles, and I remember thinking, “This just isn’t going to be worth our time.”

The Referral That Made Me Think Twice

One thing stopped me from saying no: it was a referral. Someone had trusted us enough to send this company our way, and I didn’t want to wave that off.

So we said yes. We took the meeting.

Then something happened that I did not expect. They didn’t stay small. They grew, and then they grew some more, and eventually they had three or four locations. And the company I was certain would never move to the cloud? They moved to the cloud. They became a great customer.

I still think about what would have happened if I’d made that decision on my first impression alone. They were a good company and a good fit. I was just looking at what they were that day instead of what they might become.

Don’t Confuse Today With Tomorrow

Here’s the lesson I’ve carried ever since: an opportunity today and the same opportunity tomorrow can look completely different.

Let me be clear, because this matters. I’m not telling you to say yes to everything. We learn to qualify opportunities for a reason, and if you’re building an MSP around recurring revenue, you need to protect that model.

There’s a difference between qualifying an opportunity and dismissing one too fast. Sometimes we get so locked onto the numbers that we forget we’re looking at a business, and businesses change. They hire people. They open locations. They acquire other companies. They add applications. Their technology needs change, and their security needs change with it.

The little company across the table from you today may not be little five years from now.

Three Questions Before You Dismiss a Small Opportunity

Before you pass on something because it looks small, ask yourself these three things.

Where could this business go? Are they growing? Are they ambitious? Are they talking about hiring, new locations, or new markets? Don’t only look at where they are. Listen for where they want to be.

Is there a relationship worth building? In my case, it was a referral. Someone had already put a little of their own reputation on the line by introducing us, and that carries something that is very hard to manufacture: trust. There was trust in the room before we had earned any of it ourselves.

Could something small lead somewhere bigger? Maybe today it’s Microsoft 365, a few computers, or a backup problem. But what happens if you do an amazing job? Could it turn into managed services? A move to the cloud? A serious security conversation? Another location that needs support? You don’t know, and that’s the whole point.

What Your Qualification Process Can’t Tell You

The irony still makes me smile. I evaluated that company based on what I knew at the moment. But their business hadn’t finished growing yet, and neither had our relationship with them.

Your qualification process can tell you whether an opportunity makes sense today. It can’t always tell you what that relationship could be worth tomorrow. Every MSP owner needs to hold both of those ideas at once.

Your Challenge This Week

Open your pipeline and find the smallest opportunity in it. You know the one: the one you’ve been staring at and thinking, “I’m not sure this is worth our time.”

Take another look. Don’t automatically say yes, but don’t automatically say no either. Ask yourself: am I only looking at what this company is today, or have I taken the time to understand what they could become?

The opportunity that doesn’t look like much right now might turn into one of the best clients you’ve ever had. We learned that one the hard way, and thankfully we took the meeting!

“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” : Wayne Gretzky

Have a great week and weekend!