Pulseway has launched MSP Toolkit 2.0. The Toolkit was first launched last year. This latest release includes a new raft of features to support MSP businesses. It aims to improve their business model, help increase lead generation and thereby increase revenue and profits. It is available at no extra cost to existing MSP customers. Enterprise Times spoke to Edgar Zacharjev, vice president of marketing at Pulseway and Marius Mihalec, founder and CEO of Pulseway about the announcement.
This next generation of solution includes access to a wide range of tools and training materials these include:
- New marketing and sales email templates, to get leads and referrals.
- White-labelled service offering PDFs (Updated). MSPs are able to brand and personalise these for their own use.
In combination, this collateral is intended to help MSPs. as Zacharjev explains: “Part of the emails that we build for them is to pitch the PDF with the value add of that service offering. It is offering monitoring services, security services and back up services.”
Also includes are:
- Pricing guides updated in combination with the new self assessment tool (qv).
- More design collateral. These are premade design files that MSPs can use on their website. There are now five times more available in this update. These also include best practice guides to assist with conversion, once prospects are on the website according to Zacharjev.
New Benchmarking solution
The toolkit also includes a new real-time self-assessment tool that will evaluate an MSP service offering and pricing strategy compared to local competitors.
Zavchajev explained this further saying: “The self assessment tool gathers the information from where you are at. The more people fill it in the more information we will get. If you are an MSP from London and you are an MSP from New York you will have different pricing strategies so your competition is at a different level. We just want to give these MSPs information about their current area and what services their competition is offering so they can step up their game.”
This benchmarking services will only be successful if MSPs actually enter their data. It will also only collect data from Pulseway customers. Once the data is entered it allows the MSPs to compare and contrast their services and pricing with the average of other competitors.
New training collateral
Pulseway has also added new training guides on Google Ads and other digital channels including Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. It has also increased the amount of online video training available from its own staff.
It has also partnered with Trumethods to deliver a unique set of training materials. Gary Pica owner, CEO and president of Trumethods an MSP industry thought leader has contributed alongside other members of his training team. Through the partnership, Pulseway is able to offer some unique Trumethods training materials for all Pulseway partners. MSPs can also easily link through to other (chargeable) Trumethods training if they wish to take advantage. This is not a taster though, there are “hours and hours” of video material available according to Zacharjev.
Why are Pulseway doing this?
Having launched the first version of Toolkit last year, Pulseway is clearly reinvesting in the platform. What are they trying to achieve? Zacharjev, summarised saying: “With a lot of this content we tried to modernise it. We wanted to give a lot of MSPs education and learning materials and tools that businesses need to generate new lead, specific ad boards and SEO. All the modern technology of modern inbound marketing”.
Why is this important? ET asked Zacharjev, he replied:
“A lot of MSPs struggle with this. Really struggle with how to price things, get new leads and how to cross sell services. We spend millions of dollars on demand generation budgets and we test a lot of these online campaigns. So we have a lot of expertise to pass back to our customers. If our customers manage to get new leads and grow it is great for us and great for them. First of all they are getting new customers and then they onboard more licenses. For us it makes sense to train them and educated on all this.”
Mihalec, added: “Here at Pulseway, we strongly believe in one simple truth: we succeed when our customers do. Whether it is by providing them with a powerful and secure solution like Pulseway RMM or bringing a truly unique product like MSP Toolkit 2.0 together to help them grow and be more successful, we want our MSP customers to get the most out of their partnership with Pulseway.”
Was version one successful? Pulseway has close to 5,000 customers. According to Zacharjev the first toolkit was used by around 2,100 of which 1,500 were proactive users. Zacharjev hopes to see that number climb to at least 2,500 – 3,000 in 2020. This is ambitious but not impossible.
Have Pulseway completed its investment in the platform?
Zacharjev answered: “It is something we are going to do on a regular basis and we will keep adding to. It will keep evolving until eventually it is a fully fledged platform.”
Enterprise Times: What does this mean
What Pulseway is doing is clever. It is taking knowledge it has gained itself and sharing it with its customer base. Importantly, it is continuing to share and update the best practises it has learnt every year. This is a significant investment in time. However, as a single major update it should also prompt more of the customers to return to the platform to have a look.
The benchmarking service is useful but relies on the honest participation of potentially competing MSPs. It will be interesting to see how many participate and whether they get the answers that they are looking for. It might have been easier if they had also added additional anonymised insights generated from information that they already have on their platform. Pulseway should now spend some effort in demonstrating how the toolkit has made a difference to some MSPs. There appear to be no case studies or blogs about its usage and the difference it has made to any MSP business. If it can find an MSP that has increased revenues as a result of using either the first or second generation toolkit then others will see its value.
