Marketing Your MSP: The Power of OKRs

If you don’t market yourself how will anyone know who you are?

A lot of companies will throw stuff at the wall, see what sticks and call that their marketing strategy. They’ll even try some of the half-baked (though often repeated) advice about marketing cluttering up the internet—with minimal to zero return for their efforts. What they should do is try something different. Something that works.

Welcome to part two of Kelly Meyers' presentation on marketing your MSP—and welcome to the world of OKRs.

If you’re unfamiliar with what they are, here’s a quick recap. OKR stands for Objective and Key Results. They are an effective goal-setting tool that helps leadership effectively communicate objectives and set the milestones necessary for achieving them.

Source: What Matters

The method was created by Andy Grove at Intel and has been utilized by companies such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, and a score of other very successful organizations. Safe to say, it’s a winning strategy.

The OKR Formula

Wait. What? There’s a formula? Yes, but don’t worry, this one’s easy…to remember😉.

It consists of an Objective and 3 to 5 supporting Key Results below it. The Key Results basically allow you to measure and monitor your progress as you work your way to the Objective. Either you achieve them or you don’t. There is no half-measure. One other important element of an OKR is the timeframe. It is set and cannot be arbitrarily shifted. Doing so will only negate the strategy and be of no help to you.

To better understand OKRs here is an example Kelly offered when she delivered this presentation at Build IT. (It’s a sports analogy built around Eli Manning and often used by John Doerr, author of the book Measure What Matters.)

In this example, the objective is to win the super bowl.

Now for the Key Results.

Remember, Key Results must be measurable and time-bound. In order to achieve the objective of winning the super bowl, the team needs to amass 300 yards per game allowing fewer than 17 points per game and rank in the top 3 in punt return coverage.

Now let’s bring this into the realm of the sales and marketing efforts of an MSP. What is your OKR? Chances are, it’s to increase sales.

To achieve this, you will need to:

• Secure a certain number of leads
• Convert those leads to partners
• Create a “playbook” with messaging and the details needed to provide a consistent message and experience throughout the customer journey

To help you get started on building your own OKRs and taking your company to the next level, we’ve put together a useful workbook that you can download here for free.

Good luck. You’ve got this!

Stay tuned for part three coming soon.