Let’s talk joint ventures. Real joint ventures. Not the kind where someone says, “Sure, I’ll refer you,” and then forgets your name by lunch.
I’m talking about true, working strategic partnerships that can drive real, qualified leads into your pipeline and tee you up to close business. And before you say, “Yeah, but I don’t know who to partner with,” let me break it down. You’ve already got a list — you’re just not using it.
Your Next JV Partner Is Already In Your Network
Start with the obvious: your clients. Your current clients have clients of their own, and many of them trust you. That trust is your shortcut to getting in front of more potential customers. Now let’s expand the circle — your CPA, your banker, your financial advisor, your insurance guy, your vendors, your suppliers, even your landlord or commercial real estate broker. All of them serve business owners who might need IT services. They are all potential JV partners.
One of our members in Jersey absolutely nailed this. He had a few clients who were in commercial real estate. So he offered to do the wiring and cabling for new tenants moving into their buildings — at cost. The landlords could mark it up and pocket the difference. What happened? He got access to every new tenant, and he closed every single one on managed services. 100% close rate.
That’s not luck. That’s strategy.
Leverage Outsourced Services Firms Who Want To Monetize Their Client Base
Here’s something a lot of MSPs are missing: there are CPA firms, law firms, HR and payroll companies — all thinking about getting into IT. Why? Because it’s another way to monetize their client base. The problem is they don’t want to deal with running an MSP.
That’s your in.
Be their white-label provider. Deliver the service, let them mark it up, and you both make money. No overhead for them, no sales hustle for you. It’s a win-win.
This is already happening. There’s a $10M MSP we work with — the Nestor Group — that partners with big VARs like Dell and HP. They act as the MSP for Latin America and the Caribbean. The VAR marks up the services, sells it to the client, and the Nestor Group delivers everything behind the scenes.
Don’t Settle For “Referrals When Asked” — Demand Better
Look, “I’ll refer you when someone asks” is NOT a joint venture. It’s a polite brush-off. You have to take control.
You need marketing promotions, not just promises.
One of our members got business from the Microsoft Store — a place that’s not even allowed to sell to businesses. Why? Because he built a relationship, showed up in person, and made it easy for the salespeople to refer business to him. They didn’t even ask for a cut. They just wanted their customers helped, and Joe made sure he was the obvious choice.
We took that a step further. Joe started holding workshops in the store’s training room, building authority by standing in a Microsoft Store teaching business owners about Office 365 and cloud migrations.
But here’s the real kicker: we created a flyer that the store reps could hand out. It offered a free customized Office 365 migration plan exclusively for business customers of the Microsoft Store. That flyer doubled the number of leads he was getting.
Why? Because we made it easy for them to refer him. You can’t just rely on people remembering you. You’ve got to give them tools. Flyers. Emails. Webinars. Books. Something.
Use Promotional Gifting To Get In Front Of More Clients
Here’s another killer example. One of our members sent a letter to an insurance association offering to provide free copies of his book to all their members. And get this — the guy who ran the association actually bought copies of the book to distribute.
Let that sink in: someone paid to get this MSP’s marketing materials into the hands of their own customers.
Books are powerful tools. You can’t give away a coupon without looking like a vendor, but a book? A book has value. It positions you as an expert and gives your partner something useful to hand out.
Make White Label Your Secret Weapon
You could be the engine behind dozens of other businesses offering managed services — and they don’t even have to run an MSP themselves.
Doug Childress at Ternium Technology Group is doing exactly this. He sells full-service MSP solutions to firms who want to offer IT services but not run them. He provides the hardware, software, help desk, security, onboarding — everything — for $130/seat. Those partners turn around and sell it for $180 to $200, and just keep the difference.
No tech headaches. No operations. Just pure profit.
You can do the same. Your law firm, CPA, HR firm clients — they could be reselling your services right now if you showed them how.
