Standing Out Among the Competition – 5 Things Top Sales & Marketing Gurus Recommend MSPs Must Do Differently

Head Nerd Stefanie Hammond shares 5 actionable principles to help MSPs stand out, build trust, and sharpen their value proposition in 2025.

Earlier this year, I launched a specialized Book Club designed specifically to help MSPs sharpen their Sales and Marketing skills. The response has been overwhelmingly positive—unsurprising, given that these two areas remain persistent pain points for many MSPs.

Our latest N‑able Horizon Report reinforces this trend, revealing that lead generation and new customer acquisition (NCA) continue to top the list of business challenges facing MSPs in 2025. With over 338,000 companies worldwide offering some form of managed services, it’s no wonder that standing out in such a saturated market remains a formidable hurdle.

So, what can MSPs do differently to rise above the noise? Based on five standout books we’ve covered in the Book Club so far this year, here are five powerful principles to help differentiate your MSP:

Principle 1. Nail Your Niche and Message

From The 1-Page Marketing Plan by Allan Dib.

Allan Dib’s The 1-Page Marketing Plan argues that marketing starts with knowing exactly who you are trying to attract and what you need to say to them. Instead of attempting to appeal to everyone, Dib emphasizes defining a specific target niche and understanding their needs deeply. This narrow focus allows you to tailor a compelling message that speaks directly to that audience. Crafting a clear message is pivotal; vague or generic messaging will lose your audience’s interest.

In practice, Dib says that this means choosing an “inch-wide, mile-deep” niche, and this is sound advice for MSPs. For many MSPs that I work with, when I ask them who they want to target for their services tell me ‘Everyone!’, but ‘everyone’ isn’t a target audience. Building an MSP that focuses on providing security and compliance services for healthcare clinics will allow you to explicitly address that sector’s concerns in your marketing. Putting this into practice, sample messaging could look like: “We provide 24/7 IT security and compliance for healthcare clinics to protect patient data and meet HIPAA requirements.”  This message is specific to the niche and highlights value in terms that matter to them. By contrast, a vague message like, “We offer proactive monitoring and great IT support to any business” could apply to countless providers and fails to impress.

Key takeaway: Know your audience and speak their language. Identify the pains or goals of your ideal clients and make that the centerpiece of your messaging. This focus will immediately differentiate you from generic competitors who haven’t tailored their story. 

Principle 2. Build Trust through Transparency

From They Ask, You Answer by Marcus Sheridan

Marcus Sheridan’s They Ask, You Answer teaches that the fastest way to build trust (and thus stand out) is to obsessively focus on your customers’ questions and concerns in your marketing. Prospects today do extensive research on their own, before they ever decide to reach out and engage with a member of your sales team. Sheridan notes that 70% of the buying decision is made before a prospect even talks to you. This means your website, blogs, and sales collateral should do the job of educating and building confidence. In his book, Sheridan identifies the “Big 5” topics that prospects always seek information on: Pricing/Costs, Problems (potential drawbacks), Comparisons, Reviews, and Best-in-class options, yet most companies shy away from these topics.

We actually had an extensive conversation in our Book Club meeting about this book. The discussion centered on the question: “Should MSPs talk about price on their website?” Most MSPs don’t, but one MSP who attended our meeting tested this principle advocated by Sheridan and found that it actually worked! He wrote a blog and recorded a short video that spoke about the elements that make up a security services contract and how those elements impact the monthly price an MSP would charge. He talked about what separates a lower cost MSP from a higher cost, security-centric MSP.  It quickly became one of his top blog articles, and the webpage he posted the article and video to, quickly became one of the top webpages that prospects accessed when they visited his site. So it just goes to show that prospects are craving this kind of information to help in their buying decisions, and when service providers hide or gloss over these areas, it breaks a prospect’s trust. Instead of avoiding controversial topics like this, in They Ask, You Answer, Sheridan urges businesses to address these topics head-on.

Key takeaway: The MSP that educates the most, wins the most. Your honest messaging, in itself, becomes a differentiator.

Principle 3. Systematize Your Marketing

From The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes/Amanda Holmes

Chet Holmes’ classic, The Ultimate Sales Machine, emphasizes the mastery of the fundamentals and implementing a consistent marketing system that delivers value and continues to reinforce your message. He contends that it is consistency that builds credibility over time. While the book covers many areas (from time management to hiring), a central takeaway is the power of focus and education in your marketing.

Holmes encourages businesses to focus their outreach efforts by creating a list of top companies to target and commit to a cycle of reaching out with personalized touches, instead of generic email blasts. He refers to this as building your ‘Dream 100’ list – which is a list of companies that you would love to have as clients someday. For MSPs, this means instead of marketing to ‘everyone’ and spreading your limited marketing dollars too thinly across every company in every industry, by identifying your dream client profiles and concentrating your messaging and nurturing efforts on them, it will ensure that your message is heard by those who will value it the most.

Holmes also highlights the importance of education-based marketing. In line with Sheridan’s ideas, he advocates using valuable content to attract and convert customers, going so far as to develop flagship educational assets as part of your lead generation. For example, an MSP might create a presentation or whitepaper on “The State of Cybersecurity for Small Businesses in 2025” containing eye-opening stats about breaches, the common vulnerabilities, and steps to mitigate them. This content is not a sales pitch for your services per se; rather, it educates the client about why they need the kind of solution you offer and why your expertise is needed. In doing so, you position your MSP as a trusted expert who understands the broader challenges, not just someone pushing IT support contracts.

Key Takeaway: Consistency and education are key. By systematizing your marketing efforts, you avoid the common MSP trap of sporadic or reactive marketing, where you only reach out when you happen to have time or when sales are slow. And a systematized approach ensures your message is heard by the right people, at the right time, in the right way.

Principle 4. Sharpen Your Value Proposition

From Conversations That Win the Complex Sale by Erik Peterson and Time Riesterer

In complex B2B sales, (which I believe all managed service sales are) bombarding your prospects with a feature dump won’t get you noticed; instead, it will get you ignored. This is because you’ll end up sounding like every other MSP out there who is also trying to sell to prospects by listing out all the features of their services. In this book, Erik Peterson and Tim Riesterer introduce the concept of the “Value Wedge”—the intersection of what you do well, what your client cares about, and what your competitors can’t easily replicate. And if you can define your Value Wedge messaging well, this will help combat the perception that your MSP is just like all the others.  

The book also discusses the importance of not being lazy in your messaging by promoting vague value propositions and instead advocates creating Power Positions that consist of bold claims or stories that hit home for the prospect. For instance, saying that your MSP “minimizes downtime” is generic. A more powerful, differentiated message could be: “We are the only MSP in the region that offers an uptime guarantee with financial penalties, because we’re that confident in our proactive security monitoring.” That kind of statement grabs attention and differentiates your MSP within seconds, and clearly separates you from competitors who might only promise “best efforts” uptime. This gives prospects a clear justification around why YOU are superior above the others.  

Key Takeaway: Don’t talk tech to your prospects – talk outcomes. By sharpening your value proposition to highlight your distinct strengths and delivering it through stories that center on client outcomes, you will be able to differentiate your MSP not just on what you offer, but how it will change the client’s world. That is far more compelling than the typical MSP generic spiel and it gives clients concrete reasons to choose you over the competition.

Principle 5. Sell the Gap, Not the Product

From Gap Selling by Keenan

Keenan’s core message in Gap Selling is simple: “No problem, no solution.” Effective sales is all about identifying the ‘Gap’ between a prospect’s current reality—i.e. their problems, frustrations and challenges—and the direction, goals, and outcomes they would like to achieve for their business in the future. And that the bigger this gap, the more valuable your solution becomes. This methodology reinforces that the focus of any sales conversation shouldn’t be on your product or service, but should be centered on the customer’s pain and the relief your services can provide.  

By acknowledging the prospect’s problems, challenges, and pain points first, this will resonate with your prospect and will capture their immediate attention, as it will convey that you get their situation. By leading with questioning techniques that work to uncover problems and challenges first, you position your MSP as that true business consultant—looking to help them solve a business problem—rather than just a vendor trying to sell them IT.

Key Takeaway: Lead with questions, not features, and sell the transformation, not the tool. By focusing relentlessly on communicating the gap in your messaging, you will differentiate your MSP in a very meaningful way. Instead of being another provider pitching “technology,” you’ll be the one who understands deeply the client’s problems and goals. Prospects will feel that “this MSP really seems to understand our situation.” That feeling builds trust and confidence, which is far more persuasive than the fanciest feature list. Remember: you’re selling a better state of being for the client’s business, and that’s a compelling, highly-differentiated message. 

Conclusion

In a world where IT providers can blur together, your ability to communicate clearly and meaningfully is what will set you apart. These five principles—drawn from some of the most respected voices in sales and marketing—offer a roadmap for doing just that:

• Allan Dib teaches you to focus your message on a specific audience.
• Marcus Sheridan shows how transparency builds trust.
• Chet Holmes emphasizes the power of consistency and education.
• Erik Peterson helps you craft a value proposition that truly stands out.
• Keenan reminds you to focus on the client’s journey, not your product.

The common thread? Put the customer’s perspective at the heart of your message: know who they are, speak to their concerns, educate them, show precisely how you solve their problems and how you can do this better than anyone else.

Do this consistently, and your MSP will no longer be just another name in a directory. It will be the trusted partner that clients feel truly understands them – and that is a differentiator no competitor can easily replicate.

Want to go deeper?

Join my MSP Sales and Marketing Book Club and be part of the ongoing conversation. We explore one new book each month and discuss how to apply its lesson in real-world MSP scenarios. You can register HERE 

Stefanie Hammond is Head Sales and Marketing Nerd at N‑able. You can follow her on LinkedIn