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Boom During Bust
How one MSP increases revenue with innovative services
Mike Cooch is pioneering new ways to generate revenue through managed services. A known innovator in the channel, he founded Everon in 2003 with the controversial idea that he didn’t need to employ field engineers. Now he’s continuing to fly in the face of tradition by putting Managed Services in places it’s never been before.
Cooch always had big ideas, “From day one we were trying a different model - taking a risk and cutting off any other options. We were wholly committed to it,” he says. Cooch believed that small businesses would be willing to trust their IT services to an entirely remote company. And they were.
Today, Everon provides nationwide managed solutions from service centers in Boston and Denver. The company handles 90% of their tickets remotely, doesn’t allow employees to go on-site and uses possible competitors as their “feet on the street”.
Last year Everon earned a spot on the 2008 Inc. Magazine list of the 5000 fastest growing companies in America with revenues growing to $3.6 million in 2007, from $596,414 in 2004. They’re also ranked as one of the Top 100 Managed Service Providers for 2008-09 by MSPmentor.
As client relationships were being built, Cooch was able to establish a system for almost every business process he had. “All businesses are, or should be, systems businesses,” he says.
To Cooch, any operation left unmanaged is a hole that leaks money. That’s one reason he partnered with ConnectWise to automate and close the loop on many of the systems he has in place.
Once he had Everon running efficiently, not only was he able to take vacations without worrying about the company, but he had time to identify new ways to expand his managed service offerings.
Google pay-per-click had been producing credible leads for Everon and over time, Cooch concluded that the public was increasingly comfortable doing business over the web. According to him, 82% of consumers use search engines to find local businesses. But the majority of small businesses haven’t been able to utilize the real potential of the web, he says. “Only 44% of SMBs have a web site and many have no clue how to leverage emerging digital marketing tactics.”
Cooch found that many SMBs, even his own clients, were using expensive outside resources to develop their web sites, but very few had web strategies. SMBs needed to use web marketing tools to generate business and needed someone they trusted to do it. Who better than their IT provider? Everon Web Services was born!
In less than a year, Everon Web Services has helped numerous clients maximize their web potential with web site creation, SEO expertise and lead generation tactics. Cooch thinks his web services business will grow faster than his IT business did, and expects Everon Web Services to be a $1 million business within the next year.
“I’ll never forget the day a client told me that our eMarketing results were bringing in so many leads that they more than covered the cost of our IT services,” Cooch said. “We were generating between 30-60 new leads for this client each month, and that translated into tens of thousands of dollars in revenue, which more than covered the roughly $2,000 a month they were paying us in IT services.”
With high expectations and the success to back it up, Cooch has introduced a completely new element into the MSP world. As he continues to innovate at Everon with managed web services, more firsts in the MSP industry are bound to emerge. We can only wonder what will be next.
“I've always wanted to build this business into something national - something scalable and I'm still in the process of experimenting with it.”
Meet Mike Cooch at the ConnectWise Partner Summit in Orlando, November 4-5 where he’ll tell about his new eMarketing tool for MSPs!
Mike Cooch is CEO and founder of Everon IT Services. He lives in Colorado with his wife Sarah and daughters Lauren and Sophia. Find out more by visiting www.everonit.com.
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