How MSPs Can Use Live and Virtual Events to Generate Managed Services Leads in 2026
Cold calling is still a very effective way to generate managed services leads.
That should not be controversial. When done correctly, telephone prospecting creates conversations, identifies qualified opportunities, and opens doors that would otherwise stay closed. For many managed service providers, it remains one of the most direct and reliable ways to get in front of decision-makers. Regardless of the technology or tools you use to support your MSP sales process, you’re still going to need to have a conversation with a human to sell a high value monthly recurring revenue contract.
By Carrie Richardson, CMO, Fox & Crow Group, Inc.
Published March 19, 2026
Cold calling performs even better when it is supported by other well-planned business development activities. All MSP lead generation activities work best when they are part of an overall business development strategy. Combining different outbound activities to generate more opportunities to connect one to one with prospects will always be more successful than using one MSP sales tactic in isolation.
That is where live and virtual events come in.
If you own an MSP and you are handling outreach internally or outsourcing lead generation to a specialized team, events can help your cold calling efforts produce stronger conversations, better follow-up opportunities, and more appointments with the right prospects. They do not replace cold calling. They make it more effective.
Managed Sales Pros can help you coordinate well-timed outbound with your current or planned IT prospecting events. We’ve been helping MSPs grow since 2014. Schedule a discussion with us to learn more about outbound cold calling to generate more managed services leads this year.
Learn more about MSP founder-led outbound cold calling by watching this Managed Sales Pros on-demand webinar on peer to peer cold calling.
Why events improve cold calling results for MSPs
Most cold calls in the managed services space start the same way. A caller tries to reach the decision-maker, introduce the company, and secure a meeting.
That works. It has always worked. But when the caller also has something timely and valuable to offer, the call gets easier.
An invitation to a relevant event changes the tone of the conversation. Instead of sounding like someone who only wants time, the caller sounds like someone bringing an opportunity, an idea, or a resource. That matters.
Events strengthen cold calling in three ways:
1. They give your callers a better opening
A prospect may not be ready to discuss replacing an IT provider on an unsolicited call. They may, however, be willing to hear about a practical event on cyber risk, compliance, cyber insurance, Microsoft security, AI policy, or employee productivity.
2. They create a lower-friction next step
A meeting request can feel like a commitment. An event invitation often feels easier to accept. That gives your team another path into the account without lowering standards for qualification.
3. They improve follow-up
When a prospect registers, attends, declines, asks for details, or forwards the invitation to someone else, your team now has a real reason to follow up. That makes the calling campaign more natural and more productive.
For MSP business owners, this is important. The goal is not to make cold calling less direct. The goal is to make it more relevant.
A better way to think about events in an outbound program
Some companies treat events as a marketing exercise and cold calling as a separate sales activity. That usually leads to finger-pointing and poor outcomes. Ian Richardson, a former MSP owner and MSP industry sales strategist recommends treating your MSP sales and marketing groups as one cohesive growth team. “All members of a growth team should be incentivized to produce new leads,” says Richardson. “When all teams are working towards a goal that has been clearly defined and agreed to by both sales AND marketing, the result is well qualified leads from all channels – including outbound cold calling. This is especially important if you’re working with an outsourced partner – everyone needs to be on the same page and invested in the same outcomes.”
For MSPs, events work best when they are integrated into the outbound process. In other words, they should be used to help your callers start better conversations, stay in contact longer, and create more opportunities to secure one-to-one appointments.
There are two practical ways to do this well.
Approach 1: Host your own event and use cold calling to invite prospects
This is the simplest model and, in many cases, the easiest to execute consistently.
Your MSP hosts a live or virtual event for a clearly defined audience, and your callers invite qualified prospects to attend while continuing to pursue sales appointments in parallel.
This works because the event gives the call a useful purpose without taking the sales objective off the table.
Examples of strong MSP event formats
The event does not have to be elaborate. It does not have to be expensive. It does need to be relevant to a specific audience.
Good options include:
- Executive breakfast briefings
- Small lunch-and-learns
- Webinar panels
- Virtual compliance workshops
- Cybersecurity roundtables
- Local networking events with an educational component
- Vendor-sponsored seminars
- Industry-specific sessions for law firms, healthcare practices, manufacturers, or financial services firms
In 2026, the most effective topics are generally tied to business risk and operational outcomes, not just technology features. Business owners are more likely to respond to conversations about what affects revenue, downtime, insurance, compliance, and productivity.
Topics that tend to perform well include:
- What small and midsize businesses need to do to stay insurable
- Practical cybersecurity priorities for growing companies
- AI usage policies for SMBs
- Preparing for audits, compliance reviews, and client security questionnaires
- Reducing operational disruption caused by poor IT standards
- How to evaluate whether your current IT support model is still working
These are the kinds of topics that help a cold call sound timely and credible.
You may be able to approach your vendor partners to subsidize an outbound event focused on their products and services.
Schedule some time with us to learn which vendors support outbound initiatives and events with joint marketing funds (JMF) or market development funds (MDF).
Approach 2: Offer to collaborate on an event the prospect can host
This approach is still underused, and it can be very effective.
Instead of only inviting prospects to your event, your calling team can also look for organizations that would benefit from hosting an educational event of their own with your participation. In that model, your company is not just asking for a meeting. You are offering something that can add value to the prospect’s clients, referral partners, or network.
This works particularly well with businesses and professionals who already advise the same kinds of companies you want to reach, such as:
- Accountants
- Lawyers
- Insurance brokers
- Fractional CFOs
- Business consultants
- Industry associations
- Chambers of commerce
- Peer networks and business groups
For example, an insurance advisor may welcome a joint webinar on cyber insurance readiness. A CPA firm may like the idea of a client session on fraud prevention and security controls. A law firm may see value in co-hosting a discussion about risk, compliance, and incident response planning.
In each case, the initial cold call becomes more strategic. You are not just introducing an MSP. You are presenting a business development idea.
That creates a different kind of conversation and often leads to a much easier path to a face-to-face meeting.
Keep the main objective clear
Events are a tool. They are not the end goal.
Your primary purpose is still to sell managed services. If your caller reaches a qualified decision-maker and there is a reasonable opening to ask for a direct appointment, they should do that. The event invitation is not there to avoid asking for the meeting. It is there to make more meetings possible and make follow-up easier.
This is where a lot of companies get off track. They become so focused on filling seats that they forget to advance the sales process.
Do not make that mistake.
If the prospect is qualified and engaged, ask for the appointment.
How to move from an event conversation to a sales meeting
This is where discipline matters.
If you are inviting someone to an event and the conversation is going well, the event should not be the only next step. Once you have established that the prospect is a fit and has some level of interest, ask for time to meet separately.
The logic is simple. If they are interested enough to attend a relevant event, they may also be willing to have a more direct conversation about their current environment, priorities, and future plans.
A transition might sound like this:
“I’m glad this topic is relevant for you. We’d be happy to have you join us. Based on what you’ve shared, it sounds like there may also be an opportunity for us to help more directly. I’d like to come by, introduce our company properly, and learn more about your current setup. What does your schedule look like late next week?”
That keeps the invitation intact while still moving the sales process forward.
If the prospect agrees to co-host an event with you, the path to a meeting is even more obvious. Planning the event requires a one-to-one discussion, and that discussion often reveals business challenges, current vendor concerns, and opportunities for a broader relationship.
When live events make the most sense
Live events are particularly useful when your sales effort is geographically focused.
If your MSP serves a defined metro area or a small set of adjacent markets, in-person events can help your cold calling team create stronger local recognition. They also tend to work well when your target audience values trust, peer relationships, and practical discussion over polished presentations.
Live events are especially effective for:
- Local business owners
- Referral partners
- Executive audiences
- Industry groups
- Prospects with longer buying cycles
- Markets where reputation and visibility matter
The best live events are usually smaller than people expect. A breakfast briefing with 12 qualified attendees can be far more productive than a large room full of unqualified names.
For MSPs, smaller and more targeted is usually better.
When virtual events make the most sense
Virtual events offer different advantages.
They are easier to schedule, less expensive to produce, and well suited to multi-market outreach. They also work well when your outsourced lead generation team is calling into several regions or verticals at once and needs a scalable offer to support the campaign.
Virtual events are especially useful for:
- Niche industry targeting
- Educational sessions
- Multi-state outreach
- Follow-up campaigns
- Short-format executive briefings
- Partner-led webinars
They are also easy to repeat. If a webinar topic performs well, you can run it again with minor changes and continue using it as a calling catalyst.
That matters because repetition improves efficiency. One good event concept can support multiple waves of prospecting.
Learn how to improve your event attendance here.
What your outsourced lead generation team needs in order to use events well
If you are outsourcing lead generation for your MSP, do not assume the callers can simply “mention the event” and get results. They need a structure.
To get the most out of event-supported calling, your team should have:
A clearly defined audience
They need to know exactly who should be invited and why. Broad audience definitions reduce both event attendance quality and appointment quality.
A short, credible event description
The explanation has to sound useful in a live conversation. If the caller cannot explain the event in one or two sentences, the positioning needs work.
Qualification criteria
Not everyone who registers matters equally. Your team needs to know who counts as a target prospect, who is a referral partner, and who is not worth additional time.
A call path that supports both outcomes
The team should know when to invite, when to ask for a meeting, and when to do both.
A follow-up plan
This should include confirmation emails, reminder calls, post-event follow-up, and appointment asks based on attendance and engagement.
Without these elements, events become busywork. With them, they become a force multiplier.
A simple framework MSPs can use
If you want to make this easy to implement, keep the campaign structure simple.
Step 1: Choose one audience
Do not build a general event for “all businesses.” Choose a defined audience such as healthcare practices, law firms, manufacturers, multi-location businesses, or companies between a certain size range.
Step 2: Choose one problem
Pick a business problem that matters to that audience. Cyber risk, compliance, insurance readiness, AI governance, productivity, and vendor accountability are all strong options when tied to the right prospect set.
Step 3: Build one event around that problem
Make the event educational and practical. Avoid making it a disguised sales pitch.
Step 4: Equip your calling team or partner with the expert team at Managed Sales Pros
Give them the list, the script, the email follow-up, the qualification standards, and the appointment-setting objective.
Step 5: Follow up based on behavior
Someone who attended should be treated differently from someone who declined, someone who asked for details, or someone who said the timing was wrong.
This approach keeps the outbound effort organized without making it complicated.
What not to do
There are a few predictable mistakes that reduce the value of events in a cold calling program.
Do not host vague events
“Technology trends” is too broad. “What business owners need to do now to stay eligible for cyber coverage” is much stronger.
Do not invite everyone
An event with weak-fit attendees may look successful on paper and still produce no pipeline.
Do not treat attendance as the only metric
The point is not just registrations. The point is qualified conversations, appointments, and sales opportunities.
Do not abandon the direct ask
If the prospect is ready for a meeting, ask for the meeting.
Do not overcomplicate production
A modest, well-positioned event is better than an elaborate event that takes too long to launch and is difficult to repeat.
Why this works particularly well for MSPs
Managed services is a trust-based sale. Prospects are often evaluating not only technical ability, but judgment, responsiveness, business maturity, and fit.
Events help showcase those qualities before the first official sales meeting.
A good event tells the market that your company understands what business owners are worried about, can explain technical issues clearly, and is capable of leading useful conversations. That makes the cold call warmer before it is ever labeled that way.
This is one reason outsourced lead generation works best when the provider understands more than just appointment setting. They need to understand positioning, sequencing, and how to use supporting activities like events to help the calling program convert at a higher rate.
Final thoughts on Events and Managed Services Leads
Cold calling works for MSPs, and it will continue to work.
But the MSPs that get the best results usually give their callers more than a script and a list. They give them a relevant reason to call, a clear path for follow-up, and a stronger bridge from first conversation to sales opportunity.
Live and virtual events do exactly that.
If you are serious about improving the output of your outbound efforts, whether your team is in-house or outsourced, events are one of the smartest ways to help your cold calling initiative produce better conversations and more qualified appointments.
Not because cold calling needs to be replaced.
Because when cold calling is done correctly, and supported correctly, it performs even better.
If you’re not sure where to begin with MSP cold calling and webinars or live events, Managed Sales Pros has been helping MSP business owners and MSP-focused SaaS vendors generate interest in live and virtual events since 2014. Schedule a call with us here.
FAQ
Do live and virtual events replace cold calling for MSPs?
Live and virtual events do not replace cold calling for generating managed services leads. They support it. Cold calling remains a strong lead generation channel for MSPs, and events help improve engagement, follow-up, and conversion.
Are virtual events effective in generating managed services leads?
Yes. Virtual events are scalable, cost-effective, and easy to align with outbound calling campaigns to generate more managed services leads across multiple markets or verticals.
What kinds of events work best for MSP prospecting?
The best events are focused on practical business concerns such as cybersecurity, compliance, cyber insurance readiness, AI governance, risk reduction, and operational performance.
Should MSP callers invite prospects to events or ask for meetings?
MSP callers should be focused on generating managed services leads. If the prospect is qualified and engaged, the caller should always ask for a meeting. The event invitation provides another useful path into the account and a reason to continue the conversation.
Can small MSPs use this approach?
In many cases, smaller MSPs can execute this better than their larger counterparts because they can stay focused on a specific market, audience, and topic. They can easily schedule and plan for a virtual event whereas larger MSPs have more red-tape to navigate both internally and externally.
Related reading: