IT service providers/MSP — how did you get your first small business clients (cold outreach not working)?

Posted by Birentechy@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 6 comments

I’ve been trying to get small business clients for IT support (servers, M365, Azure, general support), but I’m clearly hitting a wall.

Current approach:

LinkedIn outreach → almost no accepts/replies
Cold emails → ignored

So I wanted to ask people who’ve actually built an IT services business:

How did you get your first few small business clients?

Did cold email or LinkedIn ever work for you?
Or was it mostly referrals / local network / something else?

Because from what I’m seeing:

Small businesses don’t really respond to cold outreach
Many already have some “IT guy” (even if not great)
Trust seems to matter more than pricing or skills

I’m trying to understand what actually works in the real world instead of guessing.

Also curious:

If you were starting from zero today, what would you focus on first?
Any specific channel that gave you your first breakthrough?

Appreciate honest answers — even if it’s “stop wasting time on cold outreach.”

Thanks.

[-]

mentiondesk@reddit

Referrals and in person networking worked way better for me than cold outreach in the early days. Building those first relationships really matters since trust is a huge factor for small businesses. Lately, I’ve seen some folks use tools like ParseStream to spot the right online discussions and jump in with helpful advice, that kind of genuine engagement can lead to opportunities without feeling like cold selling.

Pristine_Curve@reddit

Pick a vertical that you are familiar with. Specialize on that. Go give a guest seminar in an industry specific conference. Teach them how to solve a problem that is tailored to the challenges that they have, and not the specific service you are trying to sell. People will attend to learn "how to solve X problem", but what they will really learn is "X can work really well, but is quite complex". They will come back to you with follow up questions, and you build the sales funnel from these contacts.

Then branch out from the one solution into other areas until you run their entire environment.

trebuchetdoomsday@reddit

linkedin is a cesspool. as someone who works on the deterrent side of client email spam, you know it's not getting through and if it is, it's being labelled with all kinds of warnings. beat feet and use your social network.

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FrankNicklin@reddit

You are in a very competitive difficult market. Absolute no no to cold call or email, that will get peoples backs up straight away. If businesses want IT support they generally go looking for it. Small businesses tend to muddle through and don’t want the additional cost of IT support. Advertising yourself on social media and word of mouth is probably the best and only option.

Humpaaa@reddit

Cold calls / Cold emails are the fastest way to get blocked by every legitimate company on the planet.