MSPs are confident 2025 will be a good year for growth. How do we know? Just take a look at N-Able’s The MSP Horizons Report 2025, where 59% of respondents forecast 20% year-on-year revenue growth. But with AI, cybersecurity and a seemingly endless stream of tech innovations, global developments, and cyber threats popping up everywhere, it can be hard for MSPs to focus on the fundamentals that underpin growth. As a digital transformation provider, sustaining this momentum means refining your operations, nurturing your talent, and building robust client relationships.
Unsure how to get started? Here are nine tips that’ll help you make the jump from surviving to thriving.
1. Define what Growth Means for You
Before you dive headfirst into tactics and tools, clarify what growth actually means for your MSP business. Do you want to go down the M&A path and sell your operation in a few years? Do you want to solidify and stabilize a smaller business? Do you want to diversify your offering and take on new talent and customers? Growth takes many forms, so it’s important you define what your hopes, dreams, goals, and current strengths are—and identify the gaps as well—before you start. Questions you may want to ask yourself include:
- What are my priorities for the year?
- How many people can I hire? What skills do I require?
- What software, tools, and platforms am I leveraging, and what’s on my wishlist?
- Do I want to become the go-to for a niche market, or do I want to diversify?
- What are the business bottlenecks and pain points? Can I solve these with what I have? Or do I need a new approach and/or new partners?
One plan, one team, and one dream!
2. Make a Growth Plan
Once you’ve established what growth looks like for you, it’s time to develop a detailed plan for achieving it. This should include:
- Pricing structure: Research your market and adopt a pricing model that reflects the value you bring. Consider tiered packages or customizable plans to cater to varying client needs. And this is important: don’t undersell yourself. Know your value and price accordingly.
- Budgets: Allocate financial resources—not only for immediate projects, but also for investments in any new tools and technologies that are on your wishlist.
- Team roles and skillsets: Map out your team’s responsibilities and identify training needs. Clearly define roles so that every team member plays a clear part in your growth strategy. Involving your team from the beginning not only helps provide direction and ensure smooth execution, but also shows them what the road ahead looks like. One plan, one team, and one dream!
3. Restructure Your Fees
As your MSP evolves, it becomes essential to reassess and restructure your fee models. Building on the work you’ve done on overall pricing structure, consider these three strategies to help refine and tailor your pricing:
- Service expansion: Introduce add-on services or premium packages that justify a re-evaluation of your fees.
- Customer segmentation: Tailor fees differently for new and established customers, ensuring that pricing remains competitive and profitable. If you choose to develop vertical-specific expertise, tailored service bundles will allow for premium pricing.
- Value-based pricing: Instead of a one-size-fits-all model, adopt a pricing strategy that reflects the value delivered to the client, factoring in the complexities of different industries or client sizes.
Don’t forget: as you move forward, so does the market. Regularly review and recalibrate your fees to align your pricing strategy with market demands—while keeping one eye on profitability.
4. Leverage Automation to Optimize Processes
There’s the A-word you’ve been hearing so often! But automation really is your new best friend. Automation tools can handle repetitive tasks such as patch management, backups and routine maintenance schedules. Many tasks that don’t require manual intervention can be automated in minutes, meaning you and your team can focus brainpower on revenue-generating activities like strategy, innovation, team development, and acquiring new clients.
- Client information management: Use CRM and ITSM systems to centralize and secure client data.
- Inventory and billable hours tracking: Automation tools can track inventory levels and highlight time spent on billable projects, ensuring transparency and reducing overheads.
- Workflow optimization: Process-automation software reduces manual administrative tasks and the risk of human error, while improving consistency across these tasks.
5. Strengthen Incident Response with RMM Tools
Remote monitoring and management (RMM) tools are the gold standard for maintaining high service standards in MSP operations. They enable:
- Proactive issue detection: Monitoring client environments in real time and addressing problems before they escalate.
- Lightning-fast incident response: Streamlining responses to incidents, which reduces downtime and boosts customer satisfaction and confidence.
- Integrated management: Combining data monitoring with automated workflows for smooth and consistent service delivery.
In short: invest in a robust RMM tool if you haven’t already. Even a basic RMM solution can immediately alert your team to potential issues, enabling rapid responses before incidents snowball into a situation where valuable resources are diverted from those revenue-generating tasks.
6. Implement the Right Billing Applications
The switch from manual billing to an automated billing application can streamline those often-painful invoicing processes while reducing errors. Tools like ConnectWise or Autotask not only streamline recurring billing but also integrate with your existing PSA and RMM software. Other benefits include:
- Error reduction: Automation minimizes the human error inherent in manual invoicing.
- Cash flow management: Timely and accurate billing directly impacts your revenue cycle and cash flow.
- Insightful reporting: Billing software often provides analytics that enable you to spot trends, identify cost-saving opportunities, and refine your service offerings.
Growth isn’t just about acquiring more customers—it’s about attracting the right customers.
7. Cultivate the Right Customers—and Onboard Them Properly
Growth isn’t just about acquiring more customers—it’s about attracting the right customers, ones that fit in with where you’re headed. Here are the things to consider:
- Targeted marketing: Often overlooked, but crucial for reaching potential customers and communicating your value. Identify your ideal customer persona based on industry, company size, and IT needs, then tailor your outreach accordingly.
- Specialization or diversification? This is the big question for MSPs going for growth. Specializing in a particular sector can help you become the go-to guy in that niche, as well as building the deep expertise that commands premium pricing. But it can limit market reach during sector-specific downturns. A diversified customer base spreads risk but may require you to adapt your services to different needs.
- Quality over quantity: Focus on cultivating long-term relationships rather than quick wins. Quality customers are more likely to drive sustained revenue growth and provide valuable referrals. There’s an important relationship between happy customers and high ARPU.
Once you’ve acquired a new customer, teach them how to work with you. Introduce an automated onboarding process with step-by-step guides, personalized touchpoints, and quick practical consultations. A welcome pack that includes practical tips on how clients can immediately engage with your services means they see immediate benefits. This sets a positive tone for your relationship and sows the trust tree seeds from the very start.
8. Partner-up for Success
Collaborations can be game-changing for an MSP looking to scale. Your service capabilities will widen, and the trust tree is nurtured. Consider these your MSP speed-dating options:
- Other MSPs: Sharing resources and expertise can lead to complementary service offerings and a stronger market presence—essentially, everyone’s a winner. Plus, showing you’re open to collaboration will open doors with other potential partners.
- Technology vendors: Strong relationships with vendors can result in better pricing, joint marketing initiatives, and early access to those cutting-edge products that might just be on your wishlist.
- Industry associations: Joining sector associations opens new channels for referrals and boosts credibility with partners and customers, as you take an active role in shaping the industry.
9. Build an Attractive Company Culture
At the heart of sustainable business growth is an environment where employees thrive. Regular training, effective feedback processes, and recognition programs foster a dynamic company culture that brings several benefits:
- Employee engagement: When employees feel valued and connected, they are more motivated. This leads to enhanced productivity and superior customer service.
- Talent retention: A positive culture helps to retain top talent, reducing the cost and disruption of high staff turnover.
- Brand ambassadors: A happy team often becomes your best advocate. They’ll reinforce your company’s reputation, which attracts both clients and future hires.
So what does growth look like for you? By defining what success means for your business and developing a detailed plan, you set the stage for scalable and sustainable success. Score some of these quick wins and you’ll be well on your way to scaling your MSP into a powerhouse of efficiency and client satisfaction.
