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I am trying to wrap my head around the importance of recognition in the SMB IT community. For many years in a row now, I have been honoured to be ranked by our peers in the IT community for the SMB 150 award. Is this really important? Well, YES and NO.
Why is it important? One potential reason is that it shows that what our team at Ulistic is doing is making a difference in the life of the managed services clients we are helping. After all, that is what Ulistic is all about, making sure those we serve achieve stratospheric success, nothing more, nothing less.
Awards are nice, but for our entire team at Ulistic, we would rather see our clients win new business versus us winning awards. After all, at 44 years old, I have won my share but when I wonder if they have they made me a better person overall, I don’t really think so.
Do awards like the SMB 150 show others that we are a leader in the industry? One could argue yes and one could argue that it was just a popularity contest and the one with the most votes won their way onto the list. After all, I did solicit my Facebook colleagues and LinkedIn friends to cast a vote for me. I think I ended up with 800 or so votes.
Some will decorate their websites with these logos and some will issue press releases about their recognitions, but does it really matter?
What really matters?
Here is what really matters and I try to share this with my clients each and every day. It is not your status in the MSP community or amongst your peers that matters most, it is how you service your clients. After all, they are the ones that sign your pay cheque every week.
Many of you are aware that Ulistic is hosting MSP workshops every month at a location near you. What I am learning from the canvasing we are doing to get IT service firms or computer consulting shops to attend our events is that many have no care about the MSP community or the ConnectWise/Autotask community, they care only about their business and doing a great job for those they are entrusted to serve.
That is great. Because if I was going to do this crazy business all over again, I would do it differently. Instead of having a huge head in my 30’s and trying to build the Stuart Crawford brand, I would have been a bit more humble and do the things that mattered the most. Serve my clients better.
The point I am trying to make here is this. SMB 150 or MSPMentor 501 awards are nice, but when it comes to your clients and in my own personal experience, they mean nothing (sorry Harry and Joe). Your clients only care about how you can best serve them and how your business can remove their technology concerns, you can have all the industry awards you want, if your company can’t take care of your clients, they will find someone who can.
Focus on client service first versus winning all kinds of awards that in the end mean nothing.
Build your business on service, your loyal clients’ successes are the best awards.
Stuart Crawford serves as Creative Director and CEO with Sebring, FL and Fort Erie, ON-based Ulistic, a specialty MSP Marketing firm focused on information technology marketing and business development. He brings a wealth of knowledge and experience pertaining to how technology business owners and IT firms can use marketing as a vehicle to obtain success.
