Do You Want to Grow but Don’t Have the Money to?

Why Joining an MSP Consulting Group Could Be the Smartest Move You Make

If you’re like most tech service providers, you’re not short on ambition. You have growth goals. You know where you want to take your business, but month after month, the numbers aren’t lining up, and it’s not because you’re not trying. It’s because the capital you need to grow just isn’t there.

This is where most MSPs get stuck. They hit a ceiling; not because of lack of opportunity, but because their budgets, KPIs and sales strategies aren’t aligned to support their goals. That’s where joining an MSP consulting group becomes more than helpful. In this article, we’ll look in more detail at how technology service providers like you can grow without excess capital, why structuring a real MSP sales process matters, and why joining a peer group could be one of the best moves you make this year.

Why Most MSPs Struggle to Grow

Most MSPs aren’t stuck because they aren’t trying. They’re stuck because their business structure can’t support the goals they’ve set, and without the right budget, data or plan, they’re forced to scale with guesswork instead of strategy.

Here’s what’s typically in the way:

1. Your Budget Doesn’t Match Your Targets

It’s common for MSPs to set big revenue goals while allocating almost nothing to the functions that drive revenue: marketing and sales.

If you’re setting a $2 million revenue target and spending less than $40,000 a year on marketing and lead generation, your budget isn’t supporting your growth. In fact, it’s working against it.

Fast-growing technology service providers typically allocate 7–10% of their annual revenue to marketing and sales to sustain scalable growth, according to TSIA benchmarks. That investment directly fuels a stronger pipeline, more brand visibility, and better sales performance.

When MSPs underfund their go-to-market efforts, they rely too heavily on referrals or word of mouth, and that can’t scale.

2. You’re Not Tracking What Actually Drives Growth

Many MSPs don’t lack data, they lack the right data, and more importantly, they lack the visibility to make strategic decisions based on it.

Here’s what we rarely see in struggling MSPs:

• Defined targets for marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) and sales-qualified leads (SQLs)
• A structured MSP sales funnel showing prospects moving from lead to close
• Clear conversion rates at each sales stage
• Visibility into the performance of each service line from a revenue and margin standpoint
• Tracking of the top MSP sales metrics like cost per lead, opportunity-to-close rate, and average customer lifetime value

Without tracking the right MSP sales metrics, you can’t optimize or prioritize. You’re just hoping the next deal closes. If you want to grow intentionally, you need a repeatable process, consistent measurements, and benchmarks that help you adjust before the business starts losing momentum.

3. You’re Not Reinvesting at the Right Time

A lot of MSPs wait for growth before they invest, but it works the other way around. Growth follows investment. If you’re waiting until everything feels safe to put money into search engine optimization, outbound prospecting or refining your sales funnel, you’ll be waiting a long time.

This doesn’t mean reckless spending. It means:

• Understanding your most productive revenue channels
• Knowing your customer acquisition cost
• Allocating capital toward what delivers ROI, not just what’s easy

MSPs who treat reinvestment like a risk instead of a lever stay stuck at the same size for years.

How to Fix it Without Burning Cash or Wasting Time

Fixing your growth strategy doesn’t mean throwing money at every marketing agency, buying expensive tools you won’t use, or gambling on a big event you can’t measure ROI from. It means tightening your business around the activities that directly impact your MSP sales process and revenue pipeline.

Here’s how you start fixing it:

Here’s a real approach tech service providers can take immediately:

• Audit and Prioritize Spend: Look at every line item related to sales and marketing. If it’s not tied directly to generating leads, nurturing prospects, or closing sales, reconsider it. Focus every dollar on activities that build pipeline or shorten the sales cycle.
• Rebuild Your Budget Around Revenue Goals: Reverse engineer your goals based on your sales process metrics. Know exactly how many leads, meetings and proposals you need, and what it will cost to make that happen.
  • Want to grow by $1M in new revenue next year?
  • Know your average deal size, close rate, and lead-to-opportunity conversion rates.
  • Build a plan that shows exactly how many leads and appointments you need and what it will cost to generate them.
• Define a Sales Process That isn’t Just Reactive: If you’re only quoting opportunities that land in your inbox, you’re stuck waiting. Touch prospects proactively and manage your MSP sales funnel with discipline at every stage. Build a proactive sales process that:
  • Outreaches to cold leads
  • Follows up persistently
  • Tracks each stage clearly from interest to close
• Refocus on Core KPIs: Don’t drown in data. Focus on the indicators that actually tell you if you’re scaling or stalling:
  • Leads generated
  • Opportunities created
  • Close rate
  • Revenue by service
  • Gross margin
• Create a Reinforcement Cycle: Every 90 days, check if your sales team’s pipeline is growing, closing rates are improving, and your marketing efforts are actually feeding the business:
  • Did marketing create enough qualified leads?
  • Did sales convert enough of those leads?
  • Did our average deal size increase?
  • Did gross margin hold steady or improve?

Adjust fast based on data. Stop running bad plays for a full year before realizing they aren’t working. Growth is a living, breathing process. It needs attention, structure and accountability. Hoping a good quarter turns into a good year is not a strategy.

What Top-Performing MSPs Do Differently

The MSPs growing the fastest right now aren’t doing ten things better. They’re doing a few things differently, and they’re doing them every single day without excuses.

Here’s where they separate themselves:

• They Plan Growth the Same Way They Plan Service Delivery: Their growth strategy is documented, structured and measured, not just talked about in leadership meetings. Marketing campaigns, sales outreach, hiring plans and margin targets are all part of a formal annual plan.
• They Invest Before They Feel Ready: They understand that marketing, salespeople, and lead generation don’t show ROI immediately. They build growth capacity ahead of demand, not after.
• They Are Relentless About KPI Tracking: If their sales pipeline drops 20%, they know by week two, not quarter two. They fix problems early because they are watching the right numbers, not waiting for revenue dips to tell them they missed something.
• They Treat Sales and Marketing as Revenue-Producing Departments: Marketing isn’t a “nice-to-have” and sales isn’t an “eventual hire.” Both are essential parts of revenue creation, and they are resourced accordingly.
• They Work on the Business More Than in it: Growth-focused MSP owners schedule time to work on strategy, planning and business structure. They are not trapped firefighting tickets all week. They build leadership teams that allow them to drive the company forward instead of drowning in daily operations.
• They Accept Accountability: No blaming the economy. No blaming the vendor. No blaming the clients. They own the outcomes of their investments, learn from missteps quickly, and keep moving.

Why an MSP Consulting Group Changes the Game

You can build this structure on your own, but you don’t have to. Joining an MSP consulting group like the MSP Elite 32.6 Club gives you the blueprint and the accountability you’re missing. It removes the guesswork and the isolation that slows most MSPs down.

Here’s what you get from the right group and why it matters:

• Proven Planning Frameworks: You won’t waste time trying to invent your own growth model. You’ll follow the same frameworks used by tech service providers already scaling past their plateaus.
• Real Budget and KPI Discipline: You’ll stop making decisions based on gut instinct. Instead, you’ll set budgets and track KPIs that directly drive new revenue and margin.
• Peer Accountability: It’s harder to ignore your weak points when you’re surrounded by other MSPs pushing for the same goals. Accountability accelerates progress.
• Access to Expertise: The right consulting group connects you with advisors who have already built, grown and sold tech service businesses.
• Faster Course Correction: Most MSPs wait months to realize something isn’t working. With structured reviews and peer feedback, you’ll spot problems faster and fix them before they cost you a quarter, or a year.
• Mindset Shift: You move from “getting by” mode to “building a business” mode, and that shift alone separates growing MSPs from stagnant ones.

Where to Go from Here

You might not be ready to add five sales reps, but you should be ready to stop treating growth like a mystery. You should be ready to run your business with the same precision and strategy your clients expect from your services.

If you want to see what a high-performing MSP growth model looks like in real life, read how DataTech hit 32.6% net profit. It’s not theory, it’s structure, execution and the right numbers behind the right strategy.

If you’re ready to explore what that could look like for your business, reach out to us. When you’re ready to grow, we’ll help you make it happen.

FAQs