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Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast

Paul Green's MSP Marketing Edge

Business Marketing

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501 episodes

The 4 types of CRMs used by MSPs (and which is best)
22/06/2026 | 36 mins.
How to choose the best CRM for your MSP by answering a few key questions. Also this week, the most important metrics to focus on, and how MSPs can actually make money from AI.

Welcome to Episode 345 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge.

The 4 types of CRMs used by MSPs (and which is best)

One of the most common questions I get from MSPs when they start thinking seriously about their marketing is, “Which CRM should we use?” And on the surface that sounds like a really simple question, but actually the more you dig into it, the more complicated it becomes. Isn’t that always the way? Because this isn’t really a question about software. It’s a question about frustration.

What MSPs are really asking when they ask me about CRMs is, “Paul, where do I put all my prospect data? How do I build a pipeline that I can actually see? How do I know who to follow up and when to follow them up? How do I stop things falling through the cracks? And why is all of this giving me such a headache?” Those are all the kind of questions that MSPs really have.

So before I walk you through the four types of CRMs that MSPs tend to use, let me say something to you. It may be slightly controversial.

I believe there isn’t one best CRM for MSPs. There’s only the best CRM for how your MSP markets and sells itself.

And those are two very different things. And the reason so many MSPs end up with the wrong tool or with a perfectly good tool that they never really properly use, is that they chose the software before they defined the marketing process and that’s backwards. The tool should serve the process never the other way around. Let’s look at the four types of CRM based on the four types of MSP.

The first type is what I’d like to call PSA led MSPs. So these are MSPs who basically live inside their PSA. ConnectWise, Autotask, HaloPSA, Synchro, Atera, Kaseya, whatever it is. Their agreements are in there and this may be you. The billing’s in there, your tickets are in there. So for you, the idea of keeping your sales activity in exactly the same place feels logical and tidy. And actually if your sales are largely driven by referrals or renewals and everything’s kind of straightforward and simple, then this can work perfectly well. If you’re not trying to build a sophisticated marketing engine but you just want visibility on leads without having more software, then that might be the right answer for you.

But a big word of caution. When a PSA vendor says their platform has a marketing module, that’s a little bit like a Swiss Army knife saying that it has a saw. So technically, yes, it’s true, but it’s not what you would choose if sawing things was something that you did every day. You can’t use that tiny little knife every day on a tree, can you? It’s just for the odd job. And it’s exactly the same with your PSA. Most marketing modules in PSAs, and I haven’t looked at all of them, so if I’m wrong on this, please email me and let me know. But most marketing modules in PSAs are not really up to the job of actually doing good comprehensive marketing every day.

The second type then is marketing-led MSPs. And these tend to be MSPs that don’t have enough leads and know that marketing has to be their principle growth activity. Again, you may be in this category right now. So they want to run campaigns, they want to publish content consistently, they want to capture leads through forms, and importantly, and this is the right thing to do, is use automation to follow up all of these leads.

So if that is you, the platforms to look at are things like HubSpot, making sure that you’ve got the marketing hub, HubSpot’s broken into lots of different hubs, so you’ll need the marketing hub. Or you could look at ActiveCampaign or look at Zoho One, or the...
Focusing On Tech Doesn't Grow Your MSP
15/06/2026 | 36 mins.
MSPs must build audiences and relationships before selling IT support, which is why marketing is so important. Also this week, why technically superior MSPs lose deals to “average” competitors, and how MSPs can build resilience every day.

Welcome to Episode 344 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge.

Every MSP is now a media & marketing company

I want to start today with something that landed in my email inbox a few weeks back from a guy called Tom Orbach. Now, he writes a newsletter called Tom’s Marketing Ideas. I’ve been a paying subscriber for a while. He’s sharp, he’s very original and when he says something, I really do pay attention.

Now, the subject line of his email was this… Every company is now a media company. And after I read the newsletter, I just couldn’t stop thinking about it because I believe he’s absolutely right and I believe it matters enormously for your MSP. Let me explain what he wrote about and then I’m going to add my own layer on top of that.

So Tom’s argument started with a data point. It was about OpenAI and how they’d recently spent over $100 million to acquire a podcast, which is kind of weird if you think about it because they didn’t acquire another technology company or any kind of software platform, they spent all that money on a podcast. In fact, it was two guys who’d been doing a live tech show for just 17 months. And then the week before that, a fintech company called Plaid, which by the way is worth $8 billion, they bought a newsletter with 200,000 subscribers and actually Tom listed company after company after company that have done the same thing.

HubSpot bought a newsletter with 2.5 million subscribers. Stripe bought a founder community. Semrush, which is an SEO tool, they bought several SEO publications. And these are not media companies, these are software and technology businesses, but they’ve all been spending hundreds of millions of dollars to own audiences. So before we explore why, let me first of all just put something out there to the universe. If there’s any business that wants to come and buy this podcast for let’s say $100 million, then please email me. Obviously I’m joking. (I’m not joking. Email me.)

Anyway, let’s look at why all of these big businesses are doing this and why even though these are big businesses buying podcasts and newsletters and stuff like that, it’s still relevant to you as an MSP. They’re doing it because they figured out something that most businesses are still catching up to. In a world where AI can produce infinite content at practically zero cost, the one thing that can’t be replicated is a trusted human voice with a loyal audience. Attention is the scarcest resource in business right now and the companies that own attention don’t need to chase customers anymore. The customers come to them. Tom Orbach in his newsletter puts this brilliantly. He says,

“The company that teaches about the industry earns the right to sell the tool.”

And that sentence is basically the entire philosophy behind what I do with this podcast, with my LinkedIn newsletter, with my weekly emails, with all of my content. I’m not really selling my MSP Marketing Edge membership. I’m building audiences of MSPs who trust me. And when they’re ready to take their marketing seriously, I’m the person they’re going to think of.

Now, here’s where this is applicable for you because the good news is you don’t need to spend $100 million on a podcast network, but you do need to think of your MSP as a media company. And what does that mean in practice? It means you should be publishing content consistently. Something that educates the business owners and managers that you want to work with. At the very least, a weekly email, a weekly LinkedIn newsletter, a sh...
Deep Dive: How MSPs Win Healthcare Clients
08/06/2026 | 34 mins.
MSPs love healthcare practices for many reasons, so here’s how to reach them and win them as clients. Also this week, the 5 questions your MSP website’s MUST answer (or prospects go elsewhere), and the scary implications for MSPs when your clients buy cyber liability Insurance.

Welcome to Episode 343 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge.

Deep dive: How MSPs win healthcare clients

Let’s talk about one of the most attractive client verticals that any MSP can go after. Healthcare practices. And when I say healthcare, I mean private practices specifically. So doctors, dentists, dental surgeons, optometrists, or opticians as they’re known here in the UK, veterinarians, we call them vets here in the UK, physiotherapists, cosmetic clinics, all of that kind of stuff. The kind of practice that’s owner operated or partnership run.

I mean somewhere that’s got a reception desk, clinical staff, and a growing pile of technology holding the whole thing together. This is not about hospitals or large health networks. This is about those small to medium-sized healthcare practices that need IT support and they’re probably getting it from someone who maybe doesn’t really understand their world, and that is your opportunity.

A heads up that this podcast is consumed all around the world and obviously there are lots of different healthcare systems out there. So for example, here in the UK, most doctors and what we call general practitioners, GPs, they work within the National Health Service, which is run by the government. So this means I’m not going to dive into specific details or specific laws for any particular country. Instead, I’m going to talk generally about how you can reach all of these kind of clients, whichever country you’re in. Because even though there are different laws and different systems around the world, these healthcare professionals all think and feel and act pretty much along the same lines.

So why do MSPs love healthcare practices so much? Well, let me count the reasons…

First of all, they’re almost entirely recession proof. People don’t stop going to the dentist when the economy wobbles. They don’t stop taking their dog to the vet. I mean, they might cut back on the extra spend such as having all their teeth replaced with those weird looking teeth that Hollywood people have, but they still maintain the basic essentials. So these businesses have a good solid base of revenue still coming in no matter what’s happening to the economy. In fact, these are businesses typically built on recurring appointments, loyal patients and services that can’t be postponed indefinitely.

Second, they are deeply dependent on technology. The appointment system, the patient records, the digital imaging, the billing software, the online prescribing, the payment processing. It’s all technology, right? And all of it needs to work all day, every single day, because when it doesn’t work, the consequences are immediate and painful. A dental practice that can’t access its patient management system on a Monday morning isn’t just frustrating. It’s losing appointments and revenue and it’s letting its patients down. And that’s the kind of downtime that gets you fired as their IT provider and the kind of risk that makes them incredibly motivated to find someone they can genuinely trust.

A side note, I worked with dentists in a previous business, one that I sold 10 years ago, and here in the UK, they call helping the patient’s “chair time”. That’s all the dentist wants, they want chair time. They want the patient in the chair, they want their fingers and metal things in the patient’s mouth, that makes them happy because they’re earning money, and anything other than chair time is losing them money. So it’s really good for you to get into the mindset of what is most import...
What Happens When You Copy Another MSP
01/06/2026 | 31 mins.
Most MSPs are just copying other MSPs’ marketing and this is a massive problem. Here’s what to do instead. Also this week, LinkedIn’s big algorithm change is SEXY for MSPs, and don’t bother starting marketing until you’ve got these fundamentals in place.

Welcome to Episode 342 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge.

The trap of copying other MSPs’ marketing (and how to escape it)

Let me describe a scene to you. You sit down one afternoon because you’ve decided that you’re finally going to sort out your marketing and you think, “I’m just going to do a bit of research. I’m going to see what other MSPs elsewhere are doing.” And that sounds like a sensible place to start, right? So you Google IT support not just in your town, because you want to look out there and see what other people are doing, so you go and look for IT support in a few different towns. And you pull up 10 MSP websites and then you start looking at them and reading them and just getting a feel for them.

After about 20 minutes or so, you close your laptop and you realise that they all say kind of the same thing. They all say things like proactive IT support or your trusted technology partner or we keep your business running, something like that. Tailored solutions for businesses of all sizes, cyber security you can rely on… all of these kind of things. They’re all versions of the same thing. Here’s the problem, because you looked at all of those websites and thought, that’s what all MSPs say so I suppose that’s what I should say too. And because of that, you then go away and write your own version of exactly the same thing. And now your website sounds exactly the same as the other websites that you already looked at. Does this make sense?

I see this pattern constantly and I do completely understand why it happens. When you don’t know where to start with your marketing, looking at what other MSPs are doing feels logical because you think maybe they’ve already figured something out. Why do I need to reinvent the wheel? I’ll just do a version of what they’ve done. The problem with that is that in the MSP world, almost nobody actually has it figured out. Most MSPs are just copying other MSPs, who themselves copied other MSPs, who copied someone who copied the first MSP website that ever got built around about 1873. That was a bit of a confusing sentence, but you get the idea. It’s like an echo chamber of sameness that’s been bouncing the same tired phrases around the whole of the channel for 20 years or so.

When everything looks and feels the same, ordinary business owner prospects cannot tell MSPs apart.

This is a massive, massive problem across the whole channel. So the business owner prospect defaults to comparing you and all of the other MSPs on the only thing that they can compare you on, which is price. And that’s exactly the outcome that you don’t want. Now here’s the really interesting bit. The reason that MSP marketing is so samey isn’t that the businesses themselves are samey. It’s just that as I was saying, when MSPs write their marketing, they think about what they do rather than what their clients feel. So they describe their service from the inside looking out and the result is technically accurate but forgettable. It’s completely interchangeable with everyone else.

So how do you escape this trap of sameness? I believe the answer is to stop looking sideways at your competitors and start looking outwards at your clients. Specifically three things:

First of all, look at who you actually are not what you do. So your personality, your story, your opinions, the way you run your business. These are all the things that make you slightly different, slightly unconventional. Th...
MSPs: Hiring A Salesperson Is A Mistake
25/05/2026 | 32 mins.
The average MSP does not need a full time salesperson, here’s what you really need. Also this week, five cool marketing ideas from other sectors, and how to outsource operations without making mistakes.

Welcome to Episode 341 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge.

Why you shouldn’t hire a salesperson, even if you hate selling

Can I be honest with you about something that might be just a little bit uncomfortable? If you hate selling, hiring a salesperson feels like the obvious answer. You get someone else to do the bits you hate, right? Problem solved, except it’s really not. And I’ve seen enough MSPs go down this road to know that for most of them it ends in frustration, wasted money, and a salesperson who quietly stops hunting for new business within about three months. Let me explain why.

The average MSP does no more than about two sales meetings a month. Two. And before you think that sounds shockingly low, it actually makes complete sense when you understand the business model of MSPs. MSPs don’t generate enormous volumes of leads because most of them don’t do a lot of marketing and that’s a kind of obvious thing to say. But more importantly, when you do win a client, that client pays you all the monthly recurring revenue for years and years and years, sometimes a decade or more.

So you don’t need to win clients every week to run a very healthy, profitable MSP. In fact, you might not be able to onboard them. You might not have the capacity to onboard a new client every week. You just need to win the right new clients, at the right time, consistently. And that might be for you one every month or two every month or something like that. But here’s what that means for hiring a salesperson.

If you’re only doing two sales meetings a month, what exactly is a full-time salesperson going to do with the other 150 odd hours?

Because new logo sales in an MSP is not a full-time job, not unless you’re a reasonably large business and you have a lot of sales activity going on. And a good salesperson who’s sitting around not selling is going to get bored, demotivated and expensive very quickly.

So MSPs think, I’ll get them to do lead generation as well. But asking a salesperson to generate leads is like asking, I don’t know, a network specialist to build a PC. And sure, they may be able to have a go at it, but it’s not what they’re good at. Lead generation and going out and meeting people and closing sales are two completely different skillsets. With all of the marketing jobs that need to be done within your MSP, you need different people to do each of those jobs.

Bearing that in mind, MSPs then think, okay, if they can’t do lead generation, then I’ll get them to do account management as well. That seems to fit. They can look after the existing clients and hunt for new ones. And yes, that kind of sounds logical, but 95 times out of a hundred, it’ll end in disaster. And here’s why. Account management is a genuinely enjoyable job. You’re talking to people who already like you, they’re already giving you money, you’re already solving problems for them and they already trust you. These are nice conversations, sorting out little small problems, conversations about the future of their business. Everyone enjoys an account management conversation.

New logo sales is the complete opposite. Until you get into the process with someone, a lot of it can be rejection, cold audiences, long sales cycles. It’s having to build trust from scratch over and over and over again. So if you give someone both of those jobs, of course they’re always going to drift towards the easier one, which is account management every single time and not because they’re lazy, because they’re human. And that means that your existing clients get lots of love...

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About Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast

Welcome to Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast. If you're a Managed Service Provider (MSP) and want to improve your marketing & grow your business, this is the show for you. It's out every Tuesday on your favorite podcast platform. Since launching in 2019, this has become the world's most listened to podcast about MSP marketing. Host Paul Green is the world's go to MSP marketing expert, and the founder of the MSP Marketing Edge. Every week you'll get really smart ideas to improve your marketing. Plus you'll hear from the best guests, who will help you think differently about the way you attract new clients. You can easily email and chat to the host Paul Green, who answers MSP's marketing questions every week. And there are versions of the podcast on YouTube if you want the full video experience. Paul and his team at the MSP Marketing Edge say their mission for the podcast is to give you practical insights and expert advice to boost your business performance. They provide strategies to help you get more clients, increase your Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR), and grow your net profit. They know that profitability is crucial, and we're here to help you succeed financially. Running an MSP can feel lonely. If you ever feel lost or overwhelmed, this podcast is for you. Each week it covers key topics for MSPs, offering specific, practical advice tailored to the channel. You will learn effective marketing techniques to attract new clients and grow your business consistently and profitably. Marketing an MSP involves many strategies, from digital marketing to traditional networking meetings. Paul's podcast explores all avenues to help you reach your target audience. The weekly episodes discuss creating compelling marketing materials, using social media effectively, and optimizing your website for search engines. Every episode features special guests, including industry veterans and successful MSP owners, who share valuable insights and real-world experiences. These interviews provide inspiration and practical tips you can apply to your business. Paul Green often talks with successful MSPs about how they are growing their businesses, sharing actionable tips and strategies. The discussions cover finding new clients, increasing revenue, and building service consistency to give you a competitive edge. They also address day-to-day business aspects like recruitment, leadership, and financial management. The goal is to equip you with the knowledge and tools to run your business efficiently and profitably. Topics include attracting and retaining top talent, creating a positive workplace culture, and motivating your team. Business growth is a central theme. In the podcast you'll hear strategies for scaling your business, expanding services, and entering new markets. Paul and his guests discuss the challenges and opportunities of growth, providing practical advice to overcome obstacles and seize opportunities. Innovation is another key topic. Discuss the latest trends in the MSP industry and how to leverage them to your advantage. Topics include digital transformation, cybersecurity, and cloud computing, helping you stay competitive. Though based in the UK, Paul's content is relevant globally. MSP challenges are similar worldwide, and his advice addresses these common issues, regardless of your location. The MSP Marketing podcast offers in-depth discussions about the channel and MSP industry, providing actionable insights and practical advice. Listen each week for expert advice, practical strategies, and insights from industry leaders. Whether you're looking to boost your client base, optimize operations, or increase profitability, the MSP Marketing Podcast supports your journey to success. About Paul Green Paul encourages listener interaction and values your feedback and suggestions. Connect with him through the website, social media, and email to share your thoughts and ideas. Paul Green is a le

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