This is probably one of those long flow posts that goes on for pages but I will make it rather quick as I’m just waiting for a quick SM replication job to complete.

Right now, your smaller peers in this business are dying. Their clients are dying. I know because we do business with a ton of people in this market and we know when we drop the ball – the agents stop logging in, the MX records go elsewhere, the web sites have their passwords changed – not so much lately. Folks are just logging in and either cancelling services outright or dropping them.

Things are not getting better out there, at all. Anywhere. They are getting worse, far worse, and accelerating down. We are not likely to see a bounce anytime soon.

OWN, thanks to experience and diverse portfolio, is growing rapidly. Most of our partner growth is through larger partners (acquisitions) and sales focused (anything for money) operations. Their growth is far exceeding the carnage on the lower end of SMB.

So what should you do?

Karl, Erick and I have an answer, it’s in a show coming to you this weekend – but it won’t be free – I figure the view into the future is worth $2.

But did I write all this simply to sell you a product (that I don’t even have yet) or to get you to think about the next step?

What I would like to know is when would be a good time to extend focus and offer cheaper services in a VAR-only model and grow the market share / client list at the expense of pushing a maintenance agreements and high margin projects for everything sold? It is clear from looking at the deathpool that the IT shops that are now long gone are only gone because their largest accounts disappeared before they could be replaced. If we are to be stuck in the downturn for the next 18-24 months, should the “full service” managed providers rethink their messaging to capture a larger client base that will deliver $ in projects and references. Let’s face it, “predictable revenues” are only “predictable” so long as your client base stays in business. If you can count your clients on your hands, you are only predicting the going concern for the survival of your business.

I’ve blogged extensively what we are doing, but I would love to hear what are you doing because folks are getting scared, I can hear it in their voices every day.

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