By Bob Vogel, B2 Marketing
I first met Shane Swanson and Eric Pepe when prepping them for an HTG webinar sponsored by RapidFire Tools.
Shane and Eric both wear two hats: one belongs to ARRC Technology, the thriving MSP based in Bakersfield, CA; the other hat belongs to CharTec, the innovative ground-breaking spin-off that trains other MSPs how to run their businesses better.
One of the many things the two organizations share in common is Network Detective, the industry's leading non-invasive IT Assessment tool. They also happen to be long-time HTG members, so it made sense to have them as guest presenters for the webinar.
To hear a short excerpt (less than 10 minutes) of that webinar featuring Shane and Eric, click here.
It’s kind of interesting how that dual usage of Network Detective came about. It started out with ARRC purchasing the tool for its own use.
(Pictured: Arrc Technology)
“We were really looking for a consistent way to quickly gather information about a prospect client environment so that we know what we’re getting into,” explained Shane Swanson, who serves as COO for both organizations.
“There’s no way that anyone could gather as much information at a prospect site so quickly -- and without agents, probes, or software installs – as we do with Network Detective,” he continued. “Not only does it gather the data we need during a new business discovery session, it also generates the reports we need to put together winning proposals.”
Eric Pepe, the ARRC Sales Engineer who uses Network Detective literally every day, explains how his organization is able to leverage this tool.
“We generally do NOT share with the client or prospect all of the information we discover with this tool,” Eric explained. “There a great graphical client summary report that we can brand and hand-over to them which outlines the big picture issues and generates a great risk score that’s based on the overall health of the network.”
Eric explained that while all of the many reports generated by Network Detective are incredibly well organized and highlight any issues in red, most clients wouldn’t really understand the significance.
“We do have more sophisticated clients that actually are interested in buying the reports that we generate with the tool,” Eric explained, “and in some cases we will sell the reports, but never for less than $5000,” (which, by the way, is many times the cost of an unlimited annual subscription to the product.”
In fact, ARRC was having so much success with Network Detective, they brought it to the attention of the CharTec training team, who immediately saw the many positive attributes of the tool. It didn’t take long for CharTec to embrace Network Detective and start to incorporate it into the best practices that it preaches to its thousands of members.
“CharTec has been an amazing partner for us,” said Mark Winter, VP of Sales for RapidFire Tools. “When we first sold Network Detective to ARRC we had no idea of their affiliation with CharTec, and when CharTec started to include our tool in their training program, we had no idea about that either! They never asked us for any kind of compensation.”
Swanson explained that ARRC is a “living laboratory” for CharTec to try out new products and flesh out its best practices. “We’re not out there to sell products to our members,” he said. “They come to us for training and objective advice. When we find something that works well for us, we share it.”
To learn more about the tool used by ARRC and endorsed by CharTec, visit www.rapidfiretools.com.
