Business & Strategy

7 Strategies for Growth: How Smaller MSPs Can Swim with the Big Fish

April 29, 2025
Claire

Manage Protect is a small business competing with larger organisations: we understand the challenges of a smaller MSP swimming with the big fish. It’s tough, and every week we read about another acquisition making our big competitors even bigger.

While the whale sharks may appear to have a competitive edge due to scalability and resources, we can punch above our weight with our agility, niche expertise, and personalised service – and by working together.

1. Niche Expertise

Specialise in specific industries or technologies to develop deep expertise and provide tailored solutions that larger, more generalised MSPs may not offer. Identifying a clear target audience also makes your marketing message more effective and can result in referrals as people move around within their industry.

2. Personal relationships

Get to know your clients’ business – take notes and record things. Which big project are they working on? Have they hired a bunch of new people lately? Take notice and proactively suggest ways to enhance their tech to support their business. When is their birthday? Send a card. We are trying to build loyalty, so they think twice when a big competitor offers cheaper rates.

3. Exceptional support

You probably offer a select range of technologies and solutions. Be the absolute experts in those technologies to avoid unnecessary vendor tickets and minimise resolution time. Use templates to ensure your communication is consistent, informative and timely. Be responsive with escalations – larger MSPs have to go through multiple channels to get to the right person.

4. Automate

“By 2027, chatbots will become the primary customer service channel for roughly a quarter of organisations.”

Gartner, Inc.

Strategic use of automation to handle repetitive tasks – namely service desk chatbots – enables your people to focus on higher-value work. By managing first-level support eg resolving common issues, answering FAQs, and handling routine troubleshooting, chatbots can reduce operational costs by up to 30%. With automation handling the basics, you can enhance service delivery, improve response times, and allocate skilled resources where they’re needed most.

5. Work with your distributor

Your friendly software distributor can do a lot more than consolidate your billing. They should be a source of industry information, product updates and roadmaps, short cuts and tips. Your distributor should be saving you time by evaluating and providing useful promotional materials and ideas, potentially co-marketing with webinars and email campaigns. We all want the same thing and can get results together.

6. Show up in person

If you tend to service businesses within a certain geographical area, go visit them. Showing up to diagnose a problem or having a face-to-face strategy session is worth 20 Zoom calls. Make an effort to look presentable. Bring merch.

7. Be agile and flexible

You can adapt more quickly to changing client needs and market trends than larger organisations. Smaller MSPs can offer customised solutions and innovative services that meet specific client requirements, without going through 12 layers of approvals to bring on a new vendor solution.

“Your size can be an asset that enables you to deliver the kind of personalised, invested service that larger competitors simply can’t. It’s this commitment that will set you apart.”

MSP Growth Hacks

8. Don’t forget your marketing

You may be so focused on delivering services that marketing takes a backseat—but that can be a costly mistake. To sustain a steady flow of new business, it’s essential to generate leads and maintain a healthy pipeline.

A strategic, low-involvement approach that includes SEO, social media, content marketing, and remarketing ensures that your MSP attracts the right clients and builds long-term trust. LinkedIn can be time consuming but is a good way to establish thought leadership in your chosen industries and show potential clients that you are engaged and responsive.

Competing with industry giants isn’t easy, but as a smaller MSP, you have unique advantages that can set you apart. By leveraging niche expertise, building strong client relationships, delivering exceptional support, and embracing automation, you can offer a level of service that larger competitors struggle to match. The Manage Protect team are always here to talk strategy, security and new ideas – let’s work together for growth and profitability.