“I got a guy”. How to know if your “guy” (or gal) is doing well?

Since this was written Squaretree sold it’s network support business to focus exclusively on Custom Programming. But with lot’s of experience in the area of MSP and Network support I am happy to share some of the 20 years experience in this area:

We run into the statement “I’ve got a guy” a lot.* (gals, see note below)  The corollary is “I am using someone I’ve used for a long time”.  Both of these are understandable.  We are in an service area that is very customer intimacy centric.  Customers have to trust us even if they really don’t know what we do or how to really measure success.  So here is what I tell my sales staff when they run into that question.

1.  So you have someone you trust, that’s great. They are there when you need them night or day, quickly to fix things?

2.  Can I ask you a question?  How often are they the hero?  It shouldn’t be that often

3.  If they have to be the hero more than twice a year or so might it make sense to at least have a second opinion on your network architecture?  It may be just right but you may be paying for heroics that are not really necessary.

* Sorry gals, I’m just the messenger here and I’ve never actually heard “I’ve got a gal” although we’ve hired some pretty terrific network engineers who happened to be women.