(02) Writing
Blog
What actually drives growth in managed services, written for operators and the investors who back them.
Your Liability Cap Does Not Cover the Sales Pitch
The liability cap in a managed services agreement limits what an MSP owes for bad work. It does not reliably limit what the MSP owes for a false statement made to win the deal. Eight court rulings across backup, software projects, cloud software, website builds, demos and security monitoring show the split, and seven checks tell an owner where the exposure sits.
The Six Partnerships an MSP Runs On
An MSP resells someone's software, subcontracts someone's labor, gets clients from someone's referrals, sells through someone's marketplace, and is owned by someone's fund, and no industry survey measures any of it. A guide to the six partnership types: what each gives, what each costs, who is doing it, what can go wrong, and the six questions for the owner's next operating review.
The Compliance Practice Nobody Bills For
Four in ten MSPs offer compliance and fewer than one in ten count it as revenue. A guide to building the practice as a real line: what it sells, who buys it, how it is priced, who runs it, what the frameworks require in 2026, whether AI governance belongs in it, and what a buyer of the MSP pays for it.
Rent the SOC, Build It, or Buy It
Most MSPs sell security. Far fewer run the room where alerts get read at three in the morning. For a private equity owner there are three doors to that capability, rent, build, or buy, and the years left on the hold should pick the door.
What Private Equity Looks for When It Buys an MSP
The scorecard a private equity platform runs on an MSP, line by line, with the published number behind each line: deal activity, size floors, recurring revenue and contract terms, margin, growth, client concentration, owner dependency, security posture, the premiums and discounts in turns of EBITDA, deal structure, and how long the process takes.
Send Us the Procedure
A private equity buyer's diligence team asks an MSP for six written procedures because each one tests whether the revenue survives the transfer of the people. Here is the list, what each document proves, and what the owner should do with it before the diligence team arrives.
The Reference Architecture
A reference architecture is a parts list with a rule attached: every client gets the same design. It is where top-quartile MSP profit comes from, and it is the one answer to why you and not the other three firms that quoted.
The Missing Service Catalog
A founder-led MSP prices every deal by feel, and the industry never settled on a model, so a hired seller has nothing to quote from. The service catalog gets written before the job description does.
The Vertical He Never Named
A founder-led MSP's client book usually clusters in one industry by accident. The buyer's job is to name it, because a vertical pitch is the one sales motion a hired seller can run without the founder.
The Milestone That Counts the Wrong Thing
MSP platforms report how fast an acquisition was integrated and never what the acquired revenue did afterward. One platform published the number that would count, and most MSPs cannot report it.
Three Ways to Take the Sales Motion Away From the Founder
When a platform buys a founder-led MSP it buys a sales engine with one moving part. The industry runs three models for replacing him, from sixty days to never, and most platforms never chose one.
Satisfied and Leaving
The same clients who report near-total trust in their MSP report majority intent to switch providers. The satisfaction slide measures the wrong thing, and the industry publishes no number that would catch it.
Your Growth Plan Has a Client-Size Problem
Demand for outside IT help rises with the size of the customer. The average MSP's client book runs the other way, and most of it sits in the band that buys least and takes almost as much work.
The Business Runs on What Nobody Wrote Down
Diligence counts contracts, margins and the tool stack. Nobody checks whether the work is written down, and that is the part that decides whether an MSP can absorb a new hire, an acquisition, or a resignation.
Half the Industry Sells Through the Owner
MSPs are almost evenly split between having a sales team and having sales run strictly by the founder. The standard deal removes that founder within two years. If you bought recurring revenue, half the time what you bought was a seller.
The Growth Engine You Bought Was the Founder
Organic growth stalls at sponsor-owned MSPs because the pipeline was the founder's personal referral network: unwritten, unbudgeted, and scheduled to leave with him. The fix gets built during the hold.
Your Vendors Reprice on a Calendar. You Don't.
Microsoft, Sophos, and Atera all raised prices this summer with dates and mechanics. Only 9 percent of MSPs have an increase written into their own contracts. The fix is escalators on paper and increases that arrive packaged, not bare.
Buying Was the Easy Part
There were 466 MSP acquisitions last year. What a platform owns the morning after is a book somebody else priced, sold by an owner who is leaving, on contracts that do not match its own. None of that becomes revenue by itself.
The Question Nobody Asks
MSPs name winning customers their biggest problem every year. An entire industry sells them the answer. Not one of those firms has ever published what it costs to win a client.
The Market Split in Two
One in ten MSPs now runs at a loss, double last year. In the same survey, the group defending real margin grew too. Same market, same year, two different businesses.
Four Dollars in Ten Start Over
The 2026 MSP 501, the industry's own honor roll, averages almost 60 percent recurring revenue. The buyers who set MSP prices want 80 or more. Closing that gap is a selling job, and the gap sets how much of this year's revenue is still there next year.
Where Did the Big Deal Go?
In one year, the share of MSPs whose typical client spends $25,000 or more fell from 75 to 41 percent, and the biggest contract bands emptied out entirely. The way back is growing accounts, not hunting whales.
Demand Has a Due Date
Regulated demand is the rare pipeline with dates attached. The US compliance calendar, updated in September 2026, and the operating system that turns it into forecastable pipeline.
More Heads Is Not a Growth Strategy
For twenty years, growing an MSP meant hiring the next technician. The next technician stopped showing up. One number tells you whether a company has found the exit, and nobody publishes it.
The Mid-Market Kept Its IT Team. Sell Beside It.
Co-managed IT is the MSP land-and-expand motion: two productized entry offers built on gaps buyers state on the record, a written division of labor that doubles as the expansion instrument, defined account stages, and four numbers to run the motion where no public benchmark exists.
They Ask, You Answer. Most MSPs Don't.
Marcus Sheridan's framework, explained for managed services: answer the five questions buyers ask, price first, and let published answers qualify the pipeline before the first appointment.
Your Next Client Already Has an MSP. Sell Like It.
Only 12% of MSPs say their new clients are mostly first-timers, and just 2% of buyers rule out ever switching. The MSP market circulates clients instead of minting them. The verified numbers behind the displacement dynamic, and the sales playbook built for it: switch triggers, evidence packs, and an instrumented defense.
The Vertical Premium Is Real. The Proof Is Narrower Than the Pitch.
Vertically specialized MSPs charge measurably more, and the churn and speed advantages everyone claims have no published data behind them. The verified numbers, the mechanisms that remain logic, and how to run verticalization as a revenue program.
Your QBR Is a Sales Meeting. Run It Like One.
The quarterly business review is the cheapest, highest-intent sales meeting an MSP has, and most run it as a service report. What effective reviews correlate with, the agenda that makes the meeting sell, and why the strongest part teaches the client about their own business.
Churn Is a Contract-Design Problem
MSP churn gets blamed on service. Most of the leak is designed in at signing. The contract terms that keep clients, and the truth about churn benchmarks.
The Growth Engine Moved
Existing-account expansion just jumped to the #2 MSP growth driver. What a new client costs, why most MSPs do not measure their own retention, and how to build the expansion motion.
Black-Box AI Won't Survive Client Diligence
Explainability is becoming a sales objection, not a compliance checkbox. How MSPs turn AI transparency into a competitive wedge in deals.
The First Public AI-Model Breach Will Reprice Every MSP
The breaches have already happened quietly. When one goes public at scale, clients will treat AI like critical infrastructure, and MSPs that pre-built governance offerings will own the conversation.
Vertical Specialization Is the Cheapest Multiple Expansion Available
Healthcare, legal, and financial-services MSPs command valuation premiums. How to verticalize an existing generalist book without rebuilding delivery.
The Revenue Architecture Problem Nobody Talks About
PE-backed services companies have sales teams but no revenue system. Here is what real revenue architecture looks like and why it matters.
What PE Operating Partners Get Wrong About AI in Portfolio Companies
PE firms push AI as cost-cutting. Smart operators deploy it to amplify existing expertise instead.
The First 90 Days as CRO at a PE-Backed Company
A practical playbook for diagnostic, design, and execution phases when stepping into revenue leadership at PE-backed services businesses.
Building an M&A Practice Inside a Services Company
How services companies can develop internal M&A capability and combine organic revenue excellence with strategic acquisitions.