An Insider's Guide to Contracting, Evaluating, and Getting Real Business Outcomes from Your MSP
What 1,000+ RFPs Taught Me About Buying Managed Services.
"By the time you reach the negotiating table, your counterpart has responded to thousands of RFPs, structured hundreds of contracts, and built commercial models specifically designed to recover margin after the deal is signed. You may be running your first outsourcing engagement."
Kevin Cartwright spent 25 years on the vendor side of managed services. He built pursuit strategies, shaped proposals, and negotiated contracts. He knows exactly how vendors price engagements, where they recover margin, and what commercial traps buyers consistently fall into. This guide is everything he wishes buyers had known — written from the other side of the table.
How vendors think about your RFP before you issue it — executive relationship building, the down-select strategy, lowball pricing mechanics, and the sales-to-delivery disconnect.
The outsourcing generation framework, environment documentation, stakeholder alignment, and building a total cost of ownership model that holds over the contract term.
Writing an RFP that produces useful responses, building a scoring framework that removes subjectivity, and conducting due diligence that goes beyond vendor-supplied references.
SLA design that creates genuine accountability, the commercial terms worth fighting for — including the full ARC/RRC and BAU/project boundary framework — and governance that actually governs.
Dedicated chapters for all seven managed services categories: Infrastructure, Cybersecurity/MSSP, Network, Managed AI, Help Desk, CCaaS/CX, and BPO — each with risk perspective, contractual guidance, and red flags.
Transition and organisational change management — why most engagements fail in transition and how to prevent it — and managing the relationship for outcomes over the full contract term.
The guide explains the frameworks. The toolkit puts them in your hands. Every appendix that involves evaluation, scoring, classification, or negotiation is delivered as a working file — ready to use in your next procurement engagement.
A PDF guide delivered alongside a zip file containing all 16 toolkit files in Word (.docx) and Excel (.xlsx) format. You receive a download link immediately after purchase. No subscription required — it's yours permanently.
Yes — a paperback edition is available on Amazon at $59.99. The PDF bundle at $79 includes the full toolkit which is not available in the print edition.
If you buy managed services, yes. The commercial and contractual frameworks in the guide apply across all industries and sectors. The category-specific chapters cover the seven most common managed services categories from infrastructure to BPO — most organisations will find at least three or four directly relevant to their current procurement.
Contact us within 30 days of purchase and we will refund you in full. No questions asked.
Yes — that's exactly what it's designed for. The toolkit files are immediately usable in a live procurement. Several buyers have told us they purchased the guide mid-negotiation and used the Contract Red Flag List and Professional Services Rate Card Template directly in vendor conversations.
PDF guide + 16-file working toolkit. Launching soon — $79 intro price for the first 90 days.