You’ve probably heard it from us before, but we’re going to say it again: Sell your brand instead of your products. If you don’t believe us, maybe a familiar face in the channel can persuade you to come over to the brand side.

Ryan Morris, principal consultant at Morris Management Partners, pushes the same theory in a guest blog post for Datto, a Norwalk, Connecticut-based backup and disaster recovery (BDR) and business continuity company.

“Here’s the challenge: If your model is all about bringing the next new thing to market, your customers won’t see you as someone who can be trusted to solve technical problems — when you show up, it’s because you want to sell them something,” he says.

To prevent this from happening, Morris suggests managed services providers (MSPs) stop selling products, however, he points out that this “does not mean stopping getting paid for products.”

“Please, sell products. Lots of them. Just make sure the story you tell is about your business and not your products,” he says.

Morris also points out the importance of building a business on practice areas, meaning break the company down into one practice for data protection, another for mobility, another for network management, etc.

“Your credibility and your value will increase over time as you focus on specific solutions, and your pricing curve will actually point up,” he says.

“The most successful MSPs know the difference between a product and a business, and more importantly, what it means to build a practice based on value,” he notes.

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