# Joe Markert

Joe Markert writes about helping managed service providers strengthen customer success, build better client partnerships, and guide customers on AI, security, and governance.

- Profile: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/creators/joe-markert/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joemarkert
- LinkedIn followers: 4,755
- Topics: artificial-intelligence, customer-success, ai-adoption, responsible-ai
- Based on 10 dated posts, latest 2026-09-28

## Summary

Joe Markert is most useful for practitioner writing and speaking on MSP customer success, growth, and responsible AI adoption.

- Best for: MSP-focused customer success platform, education program, or channel event wanting a practitioner contributor.
- Not for: Consumer or broad-market software brands seeking paid high-volume reach and impression campaigns.
- Check first: Confirm scope, terms, recent audience data, and speaking history before contacting them.

### Takeaways

- Customer success can run as six disciplines: Strategy, Health, Deliverables, Process, People, Technology.
- AI adoption makes security, governance, and compliance sellable rather than postponable costs.
- Conference returns come from relationships; arrange meetings before arrival and prioritize conversations.

## Main ideas

- **Customer success should be an operating system an MSP can run, not another framework**: Markert argues that the industry has no shortage of opinions or frameworks; it needs models that survive contact with reality: messy clients, stalled adoption and value that is not obvious. Their answer is six disciplines—Strategy, Health, Deliverables, Process, People and Technology—treated as one connected operating system rather than separate initiatives. Markert says they developed this view by living the work in client environments over two years, not by reading about it, and puts customer success at the centre of how an MSP operates, not in a talk track.
- **AI adoption is what finally makes security, governance and compliance sellable**: Markert argues that AI may be the biggest gift the MSP industry has received in a decade—not because it replaces security, but because it finally makes security sellable. For years, MSPs warned clients that they needed better security, governance and compliance; clients nodded and moved on. Now clients ask how to use AI, making the same foundation mission critical and turning costs into prerequisites. Markert sees that reframing as a chance for MSPs to reclaim the trusted-advisor role, guiding customers toward responsible AI rather than simply building AI solutions.
- **Vendors should raise the bar for MSPs rather than simplify products to meet them**: Markert draws a line at vendors who strip solutions down to "meet MSPs where they are." Their counter: MSPs want more, want to improve and want to delight their clients and teams, so tools should extend what they can do. When Markert backs a product, they name its specific value in their own terms, credit the team and invite direct messages from people evaluating it. The same stance informs their criticism of cautious simplification over ambition.
- **Conference return comes from relationships, and networking can be taught as steps**: Markert argues that people attend conferences for the content but return for the relationships: the content is usually online later, but the conversations aren’t. They turn that belief into repeatable tactics, encouraging readers to create conversations before, during and after the agenda instead of trying to cover the floor.
- **A consistent format: short practitioner posts built around a single usable takeaway**: Markert’s posts share a short, structured style: a checklist, numbered moves or a contrast between old and new thinking, anchored by a quotable line. They write as a practitioner, testing ideas in client environments, collaborating with vendor teams and drawing conference advice from their own habits. Nearly every post ends with something readers can do next.

## Work to read

- [How the Six Disciplines turn customer success into an MSP operating system](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/joemarkert_msp2mvp-customersuccess-msp-activity-7510383140314726400-Qete)
- [Conference networking playbook for MSP events](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/joemarkert_gtia-gtiachannelcon-channelcon2026-activity-7490070251171311616-JOVW)
- [Public support for a vendor that asks MSPs to aim higher](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/joemarkert_i-love-collaborating-with-courageous-team-activity-7487967085289975809-UHl5)
- [Why AI finally sells MSP security and governance](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/joemarkert_msp-ai-responsibleai-activity-7481010539423244289-5Eo5)

## Brand relationships

- **ScalePad** (disclosed_partnership)
- **Lexful** (disclosed_partnership)

## Partnerships

The four posts show how Markert works alongside vendors and event audiences, but don't specify paid-placement terms. Markert contributed an essay titled "The Two Chasms" to Chris Day's book MSP to MVP: Building Unbreakable Partnerships in the Customer Success Era, describing two years spent testing the book's ideas in real client environments before promoting the release. Markert also credits Lexful, a team described as a collaborator working to surface signals for MSPs, and invites direct messages from people evaluating that work. At conferences, Markert asks people to make contact before arriving rather than on the show floor. Buyers should treat these as observable collaboration patterns with real lead times, not as a published menu of purchasable packages.

## Alternatives

- Roger Collins: Choose Roger Collins when the need is the sales and customer-success mechanics an MSP owner actually has to run, rather than AI. The quarterly business review post lays out a seven-part agenda — business update, executive summary, security review, service experience review, strategic roadmap progress, risk review, recommendations — and gives worked phrasing for reporting security numbers ('We blocked 4219 malicious emails this quarter; two users clicked phishing links, but MFA prevented credential compromise') and for reading ticket trends as outcomes rather than volumes. The other post is a first-person account of a hiring rejection, the reply sent back, and the results that followed at a later employer, which gives a session a concrete personal arc about handling no and proving people wrong.
- Dan Sorensen: Choose Dan Sorensen when the audience is security and AI governance decision-makers rather than people focused on MSP growth. One post maps AI risk to the physical layer — where US data centers and power projects sit, tracked from first permit to completion, with concentration and grid-dependency questions a risk team can act on. The other argues that traditional data loss prevention sits at the perimeter and cannot see shadow AI running in browsers and approved apps, and that an employee uploading customer data to a chatbot can put an organisation days away from an SEC materiality filing. For a session on AI governance, third-party risk, or critical-infrastructure dependency, that supplies a concrete and non-obvious question list.
- Michelle Woodward Hodges: Choose Michelle Woodward Hodges for a channel-facing, security-vendor point of view on AI and identity. One post reports what partners say they want: practical AI applications that improve security and simplify operations, AI readiness treated as a counterpart to cybersecurity readiness, and AI fluency built without chasing every new capability, with human judgement kept in the loop. The other turns that into sellable work — reviewing privileged, inactive and third-party accounts, strengthening authentication with MFA and SSO, applying least privilege through IAM and PAM, continuously monitoring login behaviour, and treating identity and access as an ongoing managed service rather than a one-time project.

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AI-assisted summary of public posts. Audience demographics are not available. Engagement appears only where we checked recent posts. Method: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/methodology/