Is MJ Shoer the Soul of the MSP Market?
… “know thyself.” Far too many entrepreneurs, Shoer has learned, do not. They go to market without a defined target customer or business model. They have an imprecise value proposition or a weak grasp of the competitive landscape.
They do other foolish things as well. Some take business without knowing how profitable it will be or whether it will be overly burdensome on their staff. In some instances, they agree to work with technologies they aren’t familiar with or with customers whose business needs they don’t fully understand.
There are questions many MSPs can’t answer. How many customers can we realistically serve? How wide is our geographic trading area? What is the bare minimum margin that we must command from every client? Could we survive a catastrophic incident within our own organization?
These aren’t easy questions, and Shoer concedes that at different times during his career he didn’t have all of the answers. But he had most. And the more he had, the more successful he was. In contrast, the fewer he had, the more uneasy he became.
Finding your lane is never simple. And at varying stages of your career, you might want to try a different one. Shoer did. But he never stopped asking the key questions that helped him find his way.
One question that many entrepreneurs ask when searching for a lane of their own is, “Do I need a specialty to stand out?”
Over the years, Shoer has learned that “going vertical” or “doubling down” on a specific technology often comes down to geography. That might sound odd, but he’s found it to be true. You can and probably should develop a vertical specialty to stand out in Dallas. But in Amarillo? You might be better off being more horizontal.
Take his own company, Jenaly. When he ran the business, Shoer had a lot of success selling to area law firms. But he couldn’t really develop a true vertical specialty because none of his clients used the same billing and case management software. The lack of uniformity made it difficult to develop repeatable processes.
“It was all over the map,” Shoer recalls.
Contrast that with a friend of his who did develop a true vertical market expertise selling to the legal community. He did so by catering to a broader geographic area than Jenaly did and by narrowing its tech choices to just two key applications.
Different companies, different lanes, Shoer learned.
Practice ‘Realistic Cybersecurity’
Shoer says there’s a growing gap between what vendors want to push and what customers actually need. The thing that will close the gap is something he calls “realistic cybersecurity.” That’s basically an approach to protect customers without overwhelming them with too much technology or too many restrictive policies.
“When that happens, customers do nothing, which is absolutely not what you want,” Shoer says.
Realistic cybersecurity starts with …