Becky Teal watched an MSP threaten to leave a vendor over two features the product had shipped years earlier. Nobody had asked.

In this episode of How to MSP, Andrew Moore talks with Becky Teal, Director of Community Peer Groups at Huntress, about how MSPs actually get value out of vendor partners, peer groups, and trade shows. Teal has been in the channel thirteen years, seven of them at what is now IT Nation Evolve, and her argument is blunt: MSPs demand quarterly business reviews from their clients and never run one with their vendors. She walks through the Four Helpful Lists and the resources most partners never ask for, from market development funds to free incident response tabletops.

What you’ll learn:

•     Why MSPs buy from each other instead of from vendors, and what that means for how you evaluate a tool

•     How to run a vendor QBR using the Four Helpful Lists: right, wrong, missing, confused

•     Eleven things channel vendors give away that only go to partners who ask

•     How to work a trade show floor, starting with the vendors you already pay

•     Why sending only the owner to a conference produces shelfware, and how to fix it

Mentioned in this episode:

•     The Go-Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann: Goodreads

•     Social Distortion on Spotify: Listen

•     Meat Loaf on Spotify: Listen

•     Huntress: huntress.com

•     IT Nation: itnation.connectwise.com

•     IT Nation Evolve: itnation.connectwise.com/evolve

•     ConnectWise: connectwise.com

•     Pax8: pax8.com

•     Provarro, formerly Taylor Business Group: provarro.com

•     MSP Geek: mspgeek.org

•     Right of Boom: rightofboom.com

•     NinjaOne: ninjaone.com

•     Backdoors and Breaches, Black Hills Information Security: View the game

About the guest:

Becky Teal is the Director of Community Peer Groups at Huntress, where she helps turn typical vendor-buyer interactions into collaborative partnerships. She spent seven years at what is now IT Nation Evolve and has been in the MSP channel for thirteen years.

Read the full show notes: https://www.ridgeviewadvisors.com/blog/how-to-turn-msp-vendors-into-partners-treat-them-like-clients

Key topics: MSP vendor management, MSP trade shows, MSP peer groups, vendor QBR, market development funds, MDF for MSPs, channel partnerships, managed service provider conferences, shelfware, incident response tabletop exercise, MSP tool consolidation, IT Nation, Right of Boom, MSP Geek

#MSP #ManagedServiceProvider #MSPChannel #VendorManagement #MSPCommunity #ITChannel #MSPGrowth #PeerGroups

About How to MSP

How to MSP is the weekly podcast for Managed Service Provider owners and operators who want to grow, scale, and exit on their terms. Host Andrew Moore — Founder of Ridgeview Advisors — interviews MSP operators, advisors, and investors on the topics that actually move the business: EOS implementation, valuation and exit strategy, sales and marketing, service delivery, M&A, financial benchmarks, and operational excellence.

Watch full episodes on the How to MSP YouTube channel.

How to MSP is produced by Ridgeview Advisors and hosted by Andrew Moore.