Partnering With Benchmark 365: What MSPs Should Know

First and foremost, when partnering with Benchmark 365, it pays to always keep in mind the long-term results.

Eventually, after the onboarding process, which takes a little commitment from you – you will be able to step away from addressing day-to-day technical issues and tackle the challenges of scaling your business and generating new revenue sources. Picture how this will feel! It’s worth the effort.

So before partnering with us, there are a few points to consider to ensure a smooth transition.

You’re not giving up control of your clients

Many prospects we speak with are concerned about losing control of their clients after partnering with us — but nothing could be further from the truth. This is a common misconception MSPs have about outsourcing. The truth is MSPs gain even more control after partnering with the Benchmark 365 team.

Unlike other offerings, with Benchmark 365’s platform, MSP owners can reallocate time, energy and resources to running their businesses. Instead of focusing efforts on solving technical issues at their own help desks, our partners are fulfilling their roles as MSP owners: They’re making business decisions. Our partners are in boardrooms presenting strategies, delivering quarterly business reviews (QBRs) and implementing complex deliverables. They’re controlling what and who to sell to. We’re just in the background, helping our partners provide the best offerings they can to their own customers.

Benchmark 365 is your partner, not your vendor

So why are we your partner? We win if you win — plain and simple. We’re part of your team — not the other way around. Benchmark 365 prides itself on being your support behind the scenes. With this in mind, it’s so important to remember the following basic point: IT is a human business.

Just like your employees, our team members appreciate feedback, support and reinforcement from you. What we’ve found is this: Benchmark 365’s most successful partners spend a little time each and every day acknowledging our team members — especially in Slack — letting them know they’ve done a great job or informing them in a constructive way where things could be improved. Not surprisingly, some of our partners take expressing gratitude to Benchmark 365’s team members to the next level.

For example, one of our partners — Jeremy Johnson from Go Computers — recently organized a pizza lunch to ring in the new year with Benchmark 365’s team. Of course, while not necessary, this simple gesture of kindness reminds the team he sees them as his peers and values the services they provide to his company. Interestingly enough, in 2018, Jeremy’s customers gave the tickets Benchmark 365 worked on a CSAT score of 98 percent. I guess the “happy techs, happy customers” maxim is true. In addition to bonding with our team, there’s another way to enhance our relationship.

Successful partners are incredible account managers. What I mean by this is when they meet or call customers, they promote the new partnership with Benchmark 365 — not by naming us specifically, of course — but by articulating the new offering in another way: by putting an emphasis on the 24/7 support, touting the expanded team and calling out the additional technical expertise across the team. While it’s important for our partners to promote the offering to the outside, they need to begin within.

As they say, patience is a virtue

Just like any other business, there’s an onboarding process with Benchmark 365, but eventually, you’re going to see a difference in your business after partnering with us — just not right away. It’s going to take some time to get things underway, so be patient. In our experience (and in most organizations), the true inflection point for customer success is about three months (90 days).

To accelerate the process, we encourage partners to participate by working hand-in-hand with our team members to ensure everything is flowing exactly — or better — than you would expect if you were handling support yourself. Another suggestion we have is the following: It’s so important to assign someone (if not yourself) to oversee the entire process. Additionally, your key team members should be available to assist our team members — just in case we run into any unforeseen obstacles.

Here’s some words of experience from Jeremy of Go Computers: “As far as the on-boarding process goes – the lines of communication were always open. With any issues we have been able to raise it, discuss it and find a solution. We’ve done some extra training with the team from time to time where we’ve noticed that there’s gaps. But to be honest any issues come from our lack of documentation rather than a failure of skill or service.”

We call our customers partners because we believe success is a two-way street. It’s a team effort to ensure you’re meeting the needs of your customers. Help us help you by trusting us when we say your clients are in your control, we consider you to be a partner and patience is key to your success.

Read our Partner Case Studies from Go Computers and AeroCMS to learn more about the Benchmark 365 experience.