How Smart MSPs Turn BCDR into a Steady Revenue Stream

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This sponsored MSP Mastered® lead article is brought to you by Kaseya.

MSPs already know their clients need business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR). The challenge is explaining its value to cost-conscious business owners, especially those who equate a backup with a complete recovery plan.

The key is to switch the conversation from data protection to business recovery. BCDR becomes easier to sell as a business service rather than another technical add-on once the conversation shifts from “Do you have a backup?” to “How quickly can you get back to work after a failure?”

The MSPs who’ve turned BCDR into a reliable revenue stream understand this distinction and, more importantly, know how to make their clients understand it too. They show clients what downtime could cost them and why a backup alone may not be enough to keep the business running.

So how do these MSPs make that conversation?

Why BCDR sells itself once you frame it right

The 2026 Kaseya State of the MSP Report found that 71% of MSPs consider acquiring new customers their biggest challenge. At the same time, 19% say they struggle to demonstrate their value quickly to prospects. The more clearly MSPs can show the business value of their services, the easier it becomes for prospects to justify the spend.

BCDR gives MSPs a natural way to have that conversation because downtime has a measurable financial impact. Research by Oxford Economics puts downtime costs at roughly $9,000 per minute, or $540,000 per hour. Even for a small business with 10 employees, the potential cost can add up quickly.

The next step is to help the client put a number on their own downtime. Estimate how long recovery could take, then factor in lost revenue, employee costs and other operating expenses while systems are unavailable.

Datto’s recovery time and downtime cost calculator uses a few basic business metrics to estimate the cost of an outage, giving MSPs a useful starting point for the conversation.

Once a prospect sees what downtime could cost their business, the conversation shifts from “Why does this cost more than backup?” to “How quickly can we get this in place?”

Close the perception gap

One statistic from The State of BCDR Report 2025 stands out. While more than 60% of businesses believed they could recover from a disaster in under a day, only 35% were actually able to do so when downtime hit.

That gap between expected recovery and actual recovery is the most powerful sales tool for MSPs. Many clients using manual or outdated backup processes can confirm their data is stored somewhere. What they cannot confirm is how long it would take to restore it or whether that restoration would work under pressure.

Consider a client had been backing up multiple servers to USB drives for months. Technically, the data exists. In practice, restoring it could take days. That’s the difference between backup and BCDR.

A framework for selling BCDR without sounding like a vendor

The MSPs who close BCDR deals consistently follow a version of the same three-step conversation:

• Start with downtime, not data. Ask the prospect how much revenue they generate per hour. Then ask how many employees would be unable to work during an outage. Calculate the cost of downtime for their specific business before mentioning any solution. When the number is in front of them, you haven’t sold anything yet. You’ve just shown them a risk they may have been overlooking.
• Introduce RTO and RPO using their own scenario. Recovery time objective (RTO) is the time it takes to restore systems after an outage. Recovery point objective (RPO) is the amount of data a business could lose between the last backup and the moment of failure. Walk them through a real scenario: If their backup runs once daily and a server fails at 3 p.m., data created since the last successful backup could be lost. Ask them what that potential data loss could cost their business.
• Anchor the conversation in reputation, not just revenue. For businesses that serve customers directly, an extended outage does damage that doesn’t show up in a downtime calculator. Consider a law firm that can’t access case files, a medical practice that can’t pull patient records or a retailer whose e-commerce site goes dark for a day. The financial loss is one thing. The damage to client relationships can be even harder to recover from.

Know which clients are worth pursuing

Not every prospect will value BCDR in the same way. Focus on businesses where downtime carries a meaningful financial or operational cost. Look at their business model and any compliance requirements that could affect their risk. The right prospect already has a reason to care, and your job is to help them put that risk into numbers.

The Datto BCDR Profitability Toolkit for MSPs gives you practical tools for the conversation. It includes a recovery and downtime cost calculator, a sales calculator to compare revenue per minute with the cost of keeping a business running during an outage, plus a sales pitch you can use with prospects.

Give prospects a reason to buy

When MSPs can show what downtime could cost, where recovery expectations fall short and what faster recovery is worth, BCDR becomes much easier to justify. Meet prospects where they are. Use their numbers, their scenarios and their business priorities. That’s why the most profitable MSPs treat BCDR not as a product upsell but as a core business conversation.

The Selling BCDR Made MSPeasy eBook goes deeper into these conversations. It includes practical sales guidance, real-world examples and a ready-to-use BCDR pitch script to help MSPs handle objections and position BCDR more effectively.