20 October 2026
Getting Sales Out of the Owner's Head: What to Build First, and in What Order
Sales & Marketing
The MSPs doing this well aren't just using AI to do the old job faster. They're using it to build a different kind of business: lower operational cost, higher-value client relationships, and revenue streams that didn't exist before.
For MSPs that stay in the same lane, the everyday work AI makes cheaper is already worth less, and clients are starting to notice. But the businesses leaning into it aren't just surviving the shift, they're using it as the reason to build something better. In this episode, we're talking to MSP leaders who are already doing exactly that: what they're building, what it's unlocking, and what it took to get moving.
Key Takeaways
The tools were never the differentiator
MSP confidence in guiding clients on AI fell from around 90% in 2024 to roughly 50% in 2025, because the hard part turned out to be change management, not deployment. Every vendor is bolting AI onto the same RMM and PSA stack, so how you deliver your own service is still the only thing that sets you apart.
Efficiency on its own does not improve margin
If you automate the service desk without growing revenue or reducing headcount, you've bought speed and spare time rather than gross margin. New business has been the number one challenge for Australian MSPs across three years of surveys, and AI hasn't shifted it.
Internal tooling is where the margin actually starts
Milan's custom agents took procurement from two full-time people to one person for two hours a week, and cut around 75% of the data entry from his finance lead's role. His test for software is simple: if a tool exists only to pull data out of another tool and present it differently, it's a candidate to cut.
The forward deployed engineer only works if you stop selling hours
Engineers are being deployed at $45,000 a month, and one deal Milan cited priced at $15,000 for assessment, $140,000 to make two workflows agentic, and $3,500 per agent per month ongoing, because it let the client repurpose eleven people. MSPs keep converting this into per-hour project work and undercutting themselves when what's being sold is a business outcome.
Clients are going ahead with or without you
Matt's warning was that if MSPs keep saying no, clients bring in consultants who will make changes the MSP won't like. Milan won a client last week purely because the incumbent refused to open Claude MCP access until a compliance project was done first.
