Fries with that? Scaling your MSP like McDonald’s – ITPN-EP006

Would you like fries with that burger? Or better yet would you like to build a managed services business the size of Mind Shift or All covered. How about just build a highly profitable business with minimal drama. Today we're going to look at three things we can learn from McDonald's to grow and scale our IT Service Provider business.

I was watching the new movie The Founder; it’s the story of the McDonald's brothers and Ray Kroc the milkshake machine salesmen that turned a burger shack in San Bernardino California into a 36,000 location mega business. McDonald's success is attributed to a couple of guiding principles that we can take into our IT services business, and today I want to talk about a few ways you can improve by taking some lessons from the McDonald's brothers.
Consistency
What does McDonald's want out of your experience? They want to give it’s customers a similar dining experience anywhere in the world and maintain high standards of service and quality. To provide fast, accurate, and friendly service regardless of location or employee. When you walk into a McDonald's and order a quarter pounder, you can be pretty sure that it will be delivered to you in 30 seconds or so and that it will taste the same as the last one you had.
Our clients want the same thing, speedy service, and a consistent experience. So here are a couple of ways you can achieve McDonald's like results
1 - Your client's experience starts with the sales department. Make sure you are overseeing your sales team and that you are presenting your company in a constant manner. This includes your branding and quoting procedures. As an owner, you need to reel in your team and make sure your sales playbook is being followed. I have seen a rogue salesperson attempt to skirt our systems and sell in a manner that didn’t fit our corporate standards.  This can be disastrous to your company’s reputation and cost you revenue or worse to lose a client. You need to set a goal to have a sales playbook that lays out exactly how your sales team should be interacting with your prospects and clients. A new member of your sales team should be able to get ramped up and know exactly how you expect them to interact as a representative of your company.
You also need to make sure your tools are configured to provide a constant experience. Some things to think about are:

Your Emails and Email Signature. Your entire team should obviously be using your corporate domain name but also a consistent email signature. The email signature is a great way to extend your branding and notify your prospects and customers of upcoming events or special announcements If you need help with your email signatures check out HubSpot free Email Signature creator.
Your PSA – Whether or not you use Connectwise Manage, Autotask or Tigerpaw, use communication templates to communicate with your customer consistently. New Tickets, Order Confirmations, Service Surveys, Invoicing and Collections are all great places you can use standard communications. These stock messages help your clients know that you have acknowledged their request and that your company is working on it. Think about how many times you have thought a message has entered a black hole because you never received back any acknowledgment that your message was received.

2- Your service team has the same opportunity to provide a consistent level of service to your customers. They can use all of the methods we just talked about for sales, but also they have the added opportunity to use the phone to deliver consistent service. You should instruct your team to deliver phone service in a manner that fits your corporate standards.Some things to think about are:

 Answering the phone: have a constant message when your team members answer the phone and make everyone stick to it. When I overhear members of my service team answering the phone in a haphazard way it goes right through me.
Asking if this is a new or existing issue.