Table of contents
Episode Summary
In this episode of Syncronized, host Brandon Garcin sits down with Erik Haas, Vice President at designDATA, to explore how MSPs can define and engage with their ideal customer profile (ICP). Erik challenges the common practice of accepting any client willing to pay, explaining that identifying your ICP early creates focus that drives profitable growth across every department.
The episode explores why ICPs should influence more than just marketing — they should shape service delivery, hiring decisions, and even product development. Erik shares practical strategies for understanding not just the technical requirements of prospects, but their business goals, cultural fit, and partnership expectations.
Both Brandon and Erik emphasize the power of transparency in client relationships, discussing how clear communication capabilities and limitations build trust. They also explore how a well-defined ICP empowers sales teams to confidently pursue the right prospects and walk away from poor fits, creating healthier client relationships and more efficient operations. For MSPs looking to scale, this episode offers actionable insights on building a cohesive business strategy around the types of clients you serve best.
Guest-at-a-Glance
💡 Name: Erik Haas
💡 What they do: Vice President
💡 Company: designDATA
💡 Noteworthy: Seven years at designDATA with diverse career spanning nuclear engineering, automotive, and boutique M&A firms
💡 Where to find them: LinkedIn
Key Insights
ICP Defines More Than Just Marketing Strategy
Your Ideal Customer Profile impacts every corner of your MSP. It guides service delivery, hiring, technology decisions, and product development. When teams understand what organizations they’re built to serve, they develop the pattern recognition needed to anticipate client issues proactively. An organizational alignment creates efficiency and prevents the firefighting mode that results from supporting too many disparate environments, ultimately delivering better client experiences and more consistent results.
Transparency Builds Better Client Relationships
Clearly communicating both capabilities and limitations establishes instant credibility with prospects. While many providers hide their service boundaries fearing lost business, being upfront prevents misalignment later. Satisfaction comes when reality meets expectations. When clients enter relationships with complete understanding, they’re more likely to become long-term partners. This approach may occasionally cost you a prospect, but those who appreciate your honesty typically become your strongest advocates and most valuable clients.
The Value of Disqualifying Prospects
Teaching your team to identify “A” versus “B” clients gives them confidence to pursue the right opportunities and walk away from poor fits. Sales representatives perform better when they believe in the value they deliver to well-matched clients rather than trying to convince everyone they encounter. This focused approach makes cold outreach less daunting, improves close rates on qualified prospects, and creates a more authentic sales process that builds genuine relationships instead of transactional interactions.
Listener Takeaways
The Importance of Defining Your ICP Early
Erik emphasizes the relevance of defining your ideal client profile from day one. While many MSPs take on any client willing to pay in the early stages, Erik argues that a clear focus on your ICPs is more important. With limited resources, misalignment with even one client has a proportionally larger impact on small organizations.
As Erik explains, “The key to profitable growth is focus. Scalable, profitable, positive growth is focus, and so your ideal client profile can help you focus your resources not only on the sales and marketing side, but across the business so that you’re using them efficiently to deliver impact for those you serve.”
Looking Beyond Technical Requirements
MSPs often focus exclusively on technical requirements when evaluating client fit, but Erik explains why this approach falls short. He encourages providers to understand the broader business context of potential clients.
As Erik puts it, “Ultimately, the decision makers are just like us. They have a goal, they’re trying to get somewhere. They’re trying to create an impact, and so they have a starting place. They’re trying to get somewhere and they’re trying to find their way around the challenges and in pursuit of the opportunities that they see in front of them.”
Building Trust Through Transparency
Erik shares how being upfront about your capabilities and limitations builds credibility with potential clients. Many MSPs avoid these difficult conversations, but Erik sees them as opportunities to build trust.
In his words, “Most organizations try to shy away from difficult conversations and oversell on those things where really you are building credibility and trust by being clear about what you have and what you don’t have, so that everyone’s going in eyes wide open.” He adds that “the equation for satisfaction is pretty simple. In some ways, it’s expectations compared to reality,” highlighting that properly set expectations create better client relationships from the start.
Empowering Your Sales Team
The ICP gives sales teams confidence to pursue the right prospects and avoid wasting time on poor fits. Erik describes how this changes the sales strategy:
“It’s impossible to pick up that phone and know you’re gonna add value to everybody. However, if you know what you’re good at and what you’re not, you can, because whatever that organization says, you can go, oh yes, we can help you with that.”
When sales understands what makes an ideal client, they can confidently disqualify prospects and even refer them elsewhere when appropriate. This creates a more authentic sales process where reps truly believe in the value they’re offering to the right organizations, rather than trying to convince everyone they encounter.
Syncronized is the MSP podcast that drives MSP growth, from startup to scale-up. In each episode, we dive into the topics that matter most to IT providers, such as automation, AI, service delivery and profitability. Join us as we engage with experts and gain hands-on insights and practical advice you can directly apply to propel your business forward.
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