In the first three articles (1, 2 & 3) of this MSP GLOBAL series, guest editor Mark Crall laid out why vendors with solid products still fail to gain traction in the MSP channel, then unpacked the weight sitting underneath every one of those decisions: the operational, financial, and personal accountability MSPs carry for their customers.
In this fourth piece, he asks who’s really being pitched when a vendor walks into an MSP meeting: not the MSP alone, but every customer standing behind them.
Take it from here, Mark!
The buyer behind the buyer
Every MSP runs a version of the same math: what does this cost me if it goes wrong, and who pays for that beyond the invoice? That math doesn’t disappear once a vendor clears procurement. It’s still running underneath every evaluation, every renewal conversation, every “Why aren’t you using this yet” from the sales team.
What that shapes, often instinctively rather than analytically, is a buyer who evaluates differently than most other buyer types in the channel.
MSPs act more like buyer representatives for their customers than resellers in the traditional technology-channel sense. Risk is part of the calculation in a way it typically isn’t for a reseller who’s simply moving product. An MSP isn’t just choosing what to sell: they’re choosing what they’re willing to stand behind when something breaks at 2:00am, and whose reputation is on the line when it does.
You’ll notice I didn’t lead with “feature strength” or “the most impressive demo”. What they’re weighing, first and foremost, is whether something reduces or amplifies the risk they already carry. That’s not the only filter in play, though it’s usually the first one. Price, ease of implementation, and how well a vendor’s own value proposition actually speaks to that risk will all factor in too—and that’s a story all its own, coming later in this series.
In most cases, what MSPs are actually selling to their customers isn’t technology for speeds and feeds, and it isn’t productivity gains or do-more-with-less solutions. By the nature of their business model, they are inherently in the risk mitigation and management business. That said, I want to see MSPs selling business outcomes and driving real productivity gains for their customers; and there’s plenty of well-placed emphasis on that today. But the analysis that decides whether a new piece of technology even makes it into the stack starts somewhere more fundamental: risk mitigation, for the MSP and for the customer they’re protecting. A vendor who enters this MSP channel without understanding that is presenting to a buyer they haven’t fully met yet.
That’s the buyer behind the buyer. A vendor pitching an MSP isn’t really pitching the MSP. They’re pitching the MSP’s whole customer base, filtered through someone who has to answer for the outcome personally. Understand that, and a lot of what looks like MSP hesitation stops looking like an obstacle and starts looking like exactly what it is: someone doing their job.
It’s also why MSPs don’t find vendors the way other buyers do. That process starts long before any pitch gets made, and it’s where this series goes next.
Watch out for more from GTM advice, coming soon.
